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By Julie Austin – Inventor

About fifteen years ago I was running in the Texas heat when I passed out from dehydration. I had my Walkman (before ipods) in one hand and my keys in the other, and had no room to carry a water bottle. I thought I had consumed enough water for a short run, but a short run turned into a long run and before I knew it I hit the pavement and ended up in the hospital.

That’s when I realized I absolutely had to find a way to carry water with me. I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find anything hands-free on the market. So I decided to invent something.

I tried several designs, but I kept coming back to a motion that felt the most natural…a hands-free water bottle strapped onto the wrists. Now I could carry water and music.

I would soon find out that coming up with the idea was the easy part. Designing a wrist water bottle that would actually work would take me another year or two.

The first design was basically a mylar bag that encompassed the wrist. It looked like a tiny air mattress with a similar valve to drink out of. It had to be washed out before each use with baking soda because some water would always be left in it and would breed bacteria. And you had to really squeeze it to get the water out.

The next design was something I called the plastic “donut”. It was made out of a harder plastic and encompassed the wrist, but it slid around on the wrist and wasn’t adjustable.

I made my final prototype out of a lump of clay, and a flat rubber band that looped through an opening in each end. The bottle would sit on top of the wrist and a stretchy band would hold it in place.

Through this whole process I was keeping an inventor’s journal with pictures and witnessed entries to document everything. I didn’t know if the new prototype would work or not, but I wanted to keep records for the Patent Office just in case.

I took the lump of clay prototype to a friend of mine and asked for a recommendation to a mold maker who did the drawings for me. The mold was $3,500. I scraped it together and the first mold was made. Luckily the first one worked! Unluckily, I needed another mold for the other wrist. It would take me several months to come up with the rest of the money, while I worked 2-3 jobs to pay for it. But at least I was on my way. With the bottle part, anyway.