#66: Barbie Engineering

If you watched the Netflix documentary The Toys That Made Us, you might be familiar with the name Jack Ryan, the engineer who helped design the iconic Barbie doll. An engineering graduate from Yale, Ryan worked as a missile engineer at Raytheon, until Ruth Handler, president of Mattel, poached him.

Ryan played a part in history when he helped design the original Barbie doll that was released in 1959. While Barbie’s looks changed over the years, the basic body and mechanisms of Barbie have remained the same throughout the decades, and that’s thanks to Jak Ryan. He’s also responsible for their popular toy Hot Wheels.