When it comes to winter clothing in Maine, LL Bean and his iconic boot usually first comes to mind. However, Leon Leonwood Bean isn’t the first Mainer to invent warm clothing for outdoor fun. There’s also Chester Greenwood, of Farmington, Maine, who in 1873 invented earmuffs!
As the legend goes, Chester enjoyed ice skating, but he didn’t like frostbite, nor did he like wool caps which made his ears itch. One day he decided to solve this problem by asking his grandmother to sew beaver fur on flannel pads that he attached to each end of a wire that he could wrap over the top of his head. Like all great inventors, at first Chester was laughed at by the other boys. However, it didn’t take long before his invention became the must have winter fashion in his town.
As with LL Bean, Chester Greenwood made modifications to his prototype. He replaced the wire with a band to make it more comfortable. He also added a hinge to the ear coverings, so that they could be adjusted to stay on better. Confident in his invention, Chester even had it patented in 1877, calling them “Ear-Mufflers.” However, as patent historians are quick to point out, Chester technically wasn’t the first to invent the earmuffs. It was just that he made them better with his addition of a hinge.
Either way, by 1883 Chester had his own earmuff factory with 11 employees producing 50,000 pairs of “Greenwood’s Champion Ear Protectors” a year! During World War I his factory in Maine was responsible for keeping our soldiers’ ears warm. Although machined produced, Chester insisted that the ear coverings were hand stitched with care. By the time of Chester Greenwood’s death in 1937 at the age of 78, his factory in Farmington, Maine was producing 400,000 pairs of earmuffs a year! In fact, his hometown still honors his memory with Chester Greenwood Day, celebrated with a parade, speeches, and of course his favorite pastime of ice skating, on the first Saturday in December each year.
Earmuffs aren’t Chester’s only invention. During his lifetime he filed over 100 patents, and is considered by the Smithsonian Institution as one of America’s 15 outstanding inventors in the 20th Century. Dubbed “an inventor for the ordinary man,” Chester Greenwood is also credited with inventing among other things, the doughnut hook, spring steel rake, folding bed, and a mechanical mouse trap. By the time of his death, more than half of his hometown of Farmington was employed making Chester’s inventions! Sadly during World War II his factory had to close due to the inability to get steel for the springs, and manufacture was eventually moved elsewhere following the war. However to this day, earmuffs continue to be a popular winter fashion, and you can thank Chester Greenwood for keeping you warm!
