The HistoryMakers

Industrial designer Charles Harrison is most famous for his work on the team that updated the View-Master, but examples of his innovations can be seen virtually everywhere. Harrison rarely visits a home that does not contain something he designed. Harrison was born on September 23, 1931, in Shreveport, Louisiana. His mother, Cora Lee Smith Harrison, was a housewife and his father, Charles, an industrial arts professor. Harrison grew up on the campuses of Southern University and Prairie View A&M University. He spent his summers wandering through the campuses' experimental farms, chemistry laboratories and woodshops.

In 1954, Harrison graduated with his B.F.A. degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. One of his early design jobs was with the small firm of Robert Podall Associates. It was here that, in 1958, Harrison joined the team that streamlined the legendary View-Master toy. In 1961, he was hired by Sears Roebuck & Company, where Harrison designed trash cans made out of heavy plastic with snap-lock lids and hundreds of other consumer products, including hair dryers, toasters, stereos, lawn mowers and sewing machines. Harrison worked at Sears for thirty-two years, rising to the position of design department manager. He received his M.S. degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology Graduate School in 1963.

Harrison has served as an adjunct professor of design at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1993. In 2000, his design work was featured in an exhibit: The World of a Product Designer: Charles Harrison at his former high school, Phoenix Union Colored High School, now the Carver Museum and Cultural Center. In 2003, Harrison began teaching classes at Columbia College. In 2008, Harrison received the lifetime achievement award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum at the Smithsonian Institution.

Harrison was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on July 24, 2002.