Albert Einstein’s name has become shorthand for genius in theoretical physics. We tend to picture him scribbling equations about space and time, not tinkering in a workshop. Yet tucked alongside his breakthroughs in relativity and quantum physics is a lesser-known legacy: more than 50 patents.
He grew up surrounded by dynamos, lamps, and electrical meters from his father and uncle’s factory. Later, while working at the Swiss Patent Office, he sharpened his eye for how machines worked — and how they could be improved.
By the end of his life, Einstein had his name on dozens of patents across several countries. None ever reached the market, but they reveal a restless curiosity about practical, applied technology. From kitchen appliances to cameras, Einstein tried to solve everyday problems — some of which were literally killing people.
Let’s open the workshop door and meet Einstein the inventor.
The Refrigerator That Tried to Save Lives
In 1926, a Berlin newspaper carried a grisly story. A family of four had suffocated in their sleep after their refrigerator leaked poisonous gas. Early fridges often relied on ammonia, sulfur dioxide, or methyl chloride. If a seal broke, those gases could turn deadly.
Einstein was shaken by the report and called his friend Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist with a knack for gadgets. Together, they built a safer alternative: a refrigerator with no moving parts, no seals, and far fewer chances to leak. Instead of a noisy mechanical compressor, they designed what’s known as an absorption refrigerator.
Their prototype worked on a simple principle — liquids boil at lower temperatures when air pressure drops. The system used butane as a refrigerant and ammonia as a carrier gas. A carefully designed circuit of chambers and tubes allowed the butane to evaporate and condense, cooling food safely.
The heart of the machine was its electromagnetic pump. Einstein once explained, “an alternating current produces an alternating magnetic field that keeps a fluid potassium-sodium alloy moving. The fluid alloy performs an alternating motion inside a closed housing and acts as the piston of a pump.”
It was brilliant for its time. Because it had no moving parts, nothing could leak or break. It was also loud — one engineer said the pump “howled like a jackal.” And by the time the patents rolled in, chemist Thomas Midgley introduced Freon, a non-toxic refrigerant that seemed like a safer solution. The Einstein-Szilard fridge faded into obscurity, though decades later engineers noted its pump design had applications in nuclear reactors.
A Sound System for the Hard of Hearing
Einstein’s inventing streak went further. In 1928, his friend Olga Eisner, a singer, began to lose her hearing. Einstein turned to engineer Rudolf Goldschmidt, and together they sketched a new kind of hearing aid.
They used magnetostriction, the phenomenon where a magnetic field slightly changes the length of a metal rod. By holding the rod under tension, tiny shifts in length could track electrical signals from sound. Their 1934 patent described it as an “electromagnetic sound reproduction apparatus.”
Einstein even wrote a playful verse for Goldschmidt during their work:
“A bit technique now and then
Can also amuse thinkers.
Therefore, audaciously I’m thinking far ahead:
One day we’ll produce something good together.”
The hearing aid never made it to market — electronic amplifiers quickly overtook their approach.
The Camera That Could Auto-Adjust Light
A decade later, Einstein joined forces with Gustav Bucky, a German-American radiologist. They dreamed up a camera that could automatically adjust to light conditions.
Their 1936 patent described a “light intensity self-adjusting camera.” It relied on the photoelectric effect — the very phenomenon that had won Einstein his Nobel Prize. The idea was simple: a photoelectric cell would measure incoming light and adjust a screen accordingly, preventing over- or under-exposed shots.
It’s unclear whether their prototype was built. But the concept foreshadowed the automatic cameras that later flooded the market. Kodak would later release the Super Six-20, celebrated as the first automatic camera. But Einstein and Bucky’s design came first. It was another example of him trying to remove friction from daily life, turning complex manual adjustments into seamless experiences.
The Most Unexpected Patent: A Blouse
Perhaps the strangest entry in Einstein’s patent record is a blouse design, filed in 1936. No one is entirely sure why. Maybe it was a favor for a friend. Maybe he was amusing himself. Either way, it reminds us that even the man who gave us relativity could dabble in fashion when the mood struck.
“The design was characterized by the side openings which also serve as arm holes; a central back panel extends from the yoke to the waistband as indicated in the figure,” wrote science historian Asis Kumar Chaudhuri.
Einstein: Not As Successful in Inventions as in Physics
Einstein’s uncle Jakob was an inventor in Munich. He produced patents for arc lamps, electric meters, and dynamos in the late 19th century. The young Albert grew up in this world of gadgets and wires, surrounded by his family’s electrical workshop.
That background came in handy when Einstein worked as a patent examiner in Bern from 1902 to 1909. His job was to sift through applications and evaluate their novelty. It was during this period that he published his “miraculous year” papers in 1905. These papers explained the photoelectric effect, provided evidence for the reality of atoms by explaining Brownian motion, introduced the theory of special relativity, and established the equivalence of mass and energy with the iconic E=mc² equation.
Historian Matthew Trainer notes in a 2006 paper that this dual life (patent clerk and theoretical physicist on the side) gave him “a great deal of expertise in this profession and he must have been well aware of the potential benefits of the patent system.”
By the late 1920s, with fame secure and political tensions rising in Germany, Einstein turned back to invention. He joined forces with collaborators who were prolific tinkerers in their own right.
But Einstein’s patents never became household products. The Great Depression, the rise of the Nazis and subsequent World War, and rapid industrial advances sidelined his designs. His collaborators — Szilard, Goldschmidt, and Bucky — often went on to other breakthroughs, but the joint inventions stayed in the archives.
And yet, they still matter. As Trainer put it, Einstein’s patent work shows how “patents are a valuable source of information for constructing historical profiles of Einstein’s colleagues.” They also show Einstein’s drive to solve real-world problems, from food safety to accessibility.
