Mary Temple Grandin, Phd
Diagonal Pen Pen shaped to keep cattle from bunching in the corners and hurting each other.
Hug Machine Chair used by autistic people to help with overstimulation.
Inventions
Dr. Temple Grandin came up with many ideas to make slaughter of livestock more humane and easier on both the people and animals involved. Most prominently her “Squeeze Machine” and her innovations to make humane slaughter accessible and affordable for beef and pork plants.
The Squeeze Machine is probably what most people associate Temple Grandin with; it is a device used for calming both people and animals. Grandin originally developed the machine to help herself receive the comfort she got when being held, while not becoming overwhelmed by being hugged by another person. She found that the pressure was what soothed her, and that being able to control the increase and decrease in pressure helped her train herself to be able to tolerate being hugged and touched by others. Grandin also found, as she got older, that spending time in the machine every day helped her to reduce the near-constant anxiety and panic attacks that plagued her.
The machine is now used to help children and adults with similar issues, such as sensory overloads related to autism, or to help with calming anxiety. It also has been found to have the same calming effect on some slaughter animals, such as cattle and pigs. Accommodations for specific animals and ages of those animals have been applied to cause maximum effect. For example, she found that in infant animals, pressure from a bandage wrapped around the head caused the head to fall back and overrode the vestibular system. This reduced struggling of the animal. When used on cattle, the machine helps to both calm and put the animal in a successfully restrained position without needing to use force and thus irritating the animal.
On top of Temple Grandin’s Innovations and Inventions, She is a co-founder of the Autism Society of America (ASA). The ASA is an organization which helps individuals with autism to lead fulfilled lives and to not be discriminated against for their autism. Unlike some other autism-supporting societies, the ASA contains Autistic individuals within its staff, and advocates for accommodations for autistic individuals rather than a single treatment or cure. It is the oldest and largest Autism organization in the United States, and Temple Grandin’s contributions are more than widely known.
Temple Grandin is inarguably the most well known person living with autism, because she is able to live an incredibly successful life. Stigma and under-education on autism causes people not to believe that there could be many like her, but our understanding of autism and how it affects the human body has been steadily increasing thanks to her and others’ work, and now many more autistic people can live fulfilling lives. She has been featured on countless radio and television programmes for all of her titles, and there are both movies and music that tributes to her and her work.