On this day in 2005 the inventor of the 'crash test dummy', Samuel L. Alderson, passed away at the age of 90.

Born in California to Romanian immigrants, Alderson opened his own research laboratory in 1952 and quickly won a contract to create dummies for use in testing aircraft ejection seats.

From there, Alderson was later to create a dummy designed to mimic an average male’s acceleration and weight properties in a car crash.

Alderson's dummies are the lineal descendants of those which remain the industry standard for frontal crash testing in the United States today. In all, his inventions are estimated to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

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