Inventor Of First At-Home Pregnancy Test To Visit Tampa For Play About Her Life

TAMPA, FL — A moment of curiosity for a 27-year-old graphic designer led to the invention of the first at-home pregnancy test in 1967, forever changing the autonomy of reproductive healthcare for women.

While working as a graphic designer at the New Jersey office of Dutch pharmaceutical company Organon, Meg Crane noticed a row of laboratory test tubes used for pregnancy tests performed in doctors' offices. She immediately wondered why women couldn't perform the tests themselves at home.

Now, nearly six decades later, Crane’s journey as an unlikely and overlooked inventor and women’s health pioneer is the subject of “Predictor,” a play produced by Powerstories Theatre that’s opening Friday at Stageworks Theatre in Tampa. Tickets are available online here.

Crane, now 86 and living in New York, will travel to Tampa for the production's final weekend, meeting audiences before the July 24 performance and participating in a talkback following the July 25 matinee.

When she first saw the doctors’ pregnancy tests lined up during a tour of Organon’s lab, she thought, “I bet they could be made into something a woman could do herself.”

“It was as simple as that when I saw those test tubes,” she told Patch.

The company had hired Crane, who was never a scientist, as a graphic designer to help develop consumer products.

Using a plastic paper clip box from her desk, a test tube, an eyedropper and a small mirror, she created a prototype for what became the world's first home pregnancy test. Her simple prototype looked more like a small chemistry set than a medical device, she said.

But convincing others of its value was more difficult than inventing it.

When she presented the idea to her supervisor, he laughed it off.

“We can’t do this. We’d lose our doctor business," he told Crane.

He also believed that only wealthy women would be interested in a personal test, she said.

Executives worried about the morality of allowing women to learn they were pregnant without going through a physician.

"There was a big person who was running the lab who wouldn’t work on it because this was not something that women should do," Crane said. "This belonged to the doctor’s office, he said. So, he was very upset about it and some of the older executives were really upset."

But she refused to let the idea die.

Crane quietly refined her design, found manufacturers capable of producing the plastic housing and continued advocating for the product until executives at Organon's parent company in the Netherlands recognized its potential.

The test, eventually marketed as Predictor, debuted in Europe before reaching the United States after FDA approval several years later.

Although Crane was listed as the inventor on the patent, she signed away her rights to the company for one dollar— “and I never got the dollar, frankly,” she said.

She believes the Predictor likely never would have reached the market had she stopped pushing for it.

"I really wanted the product to happen. That's the only way it was going to go forward,” she said.

Crane largely kept her role private for decades, assuming few people would believe that a graphic designer—not a chemist or physician—had invented the first home pregnancy test.

That changed after she read a 2012 New York Times article about pregnancy tests that omitted her contribution. She still had her original prototype tucked away in a shoebox, eventually auctioning it to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where it helped bring renewed attention to her story.

A follow-up New York Times feature inspired playwright Jennifer Blackmer to write “Predictor,” which traces Crane's determination to bring women a revolutionary new tool despite corporate resistance and cultural expectations.

The play blends comedy, surrealism and history while exploring themes of bodily autonomy and women's agency.

For Crane, one of the greatest rewards has been hearing from audience members whose lives were touched by the invention.

"There's a lot of emotion around pregnancy tests," she said. "Whatever's going on for a person wanting to know and finding out their status... it's not a small thing."

“Predictor” runs July 17-26 at Stageworks Theatre in Tampa.

Crane will attend a meet-and-greet before the July 24 performance and participate in a post-show talkback following the July 25 matinee.

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