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Apr 14, 2023 · She recruited 25,000 black women by the early 1900s from North and Central America, and the Caribbean as door-to-door beauty consultants. Inventions of Madam C. J. Walker – Female African ...
- Paper Bags
- Kevlar
- Foot-Pedal Trash Cans
- Monopoly
- Windshield Wipers
- Disposable Diapers
- Dishwashers
- Liquid Paper
- Alphabet Blocks
- The Apgar Score
America got a brand new paper bag when cotton mill worker Margaret Knightinvented a machine to make them with a flat square bottom in 1868. (Paper bags originally looked more like envelopes.) A man named Charles Annan saw her design and tried to patent the idea first. Knight filed a lawsuit and won the patent fair and square in 1871.
Lightweight, high-tensile Kevlar—five times stronger than steel—will take a bullet for you. DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek accidentally invented it while trying to perfect a lighter fiber for car tires and earned a patent in 1966.
Lillian Gilbreth improved existing inventions with small, but ingenious, tweaks. In the early 1900s, she designed the shelves inside refrigerator doors, made the can opener easier to use, and tidied up cleaning with a foot-pedal trash can. Gilbreth is most famous for her pioneering work in efficiency management and ergonomics with her husband, Fran...
Elizabeth Magie created The Landlord’s Game to spread the economic theory of Georgism—teaching players about the unfairness of land-grabbing, the disadvantages of renting, and the need for a single land value tax on owners. Fun stuff! Magie patented the board game in 1904 and self-published it in 1906. Nearly 30 years later, a man named Charles Dar...
Drivers were skeptical when Mary Anderson invented the first manual windshield wipers in 1903. They thought it was safer to drive with rain and snow obscuring the road than to pull a lever to clear it. (Another woman inventor, Charlotte Bridgwood, invented an automatic versionwith an electric roller in 1917. It didn’t take off, either.) But by the ...
Marion Donovan didn’t take all the mess out of diaper changing when she patented the waterproof “Boater” in 1951. But she changed parenting—and well, babies—forever. The waterproof diaper cover, originally made with a shower curtain, was first sold at Saks Fifth Avenue. Donovan sold the patent to the Keko Corporation for $1 million and then created...
Patented in 1886, the first dishwasher combined high water pressure, a wheel, a boiler, and a wire rack like the ones still used for dish drying. Inventor Josephine Cochranenever used it herself, but it made life easier for her servants.
In the days before the delete key, secretary Bette Nesmith Grahamsecretly used white tempera paint to cover up her typing errors. She spent years perfecting the formula in her kitchen before patenting Liquid Paper in 1958. Gillette bought her company in 1979 for $47.5 million, and that’s no typo.
Children don’t read books by anti-suffrage author Adeline D.T. Whitneythese days—and that’s probably for the better. But the wooden blocks she patented in 1882 still help them learn their ABCs.
Life is a series of tests, starting with the Apgar, named after obstetrical anesthesiologist Dr. Virginia Apgar. In 1952, she began testing newborns one minute and five minutes after birth to determine if they needed immediate care. About 10 years later, the medical community made a backronym—an acronym designed to fit an existing word—to remember ...
4 days ago · Wireless Transmission Technology – Hedy Lamarr (1941) Better known for her acting career, Hedy Lamarr was also a brilliant inventor. During World War II, she co-invented a frequency-hopping technology that laid the foundation for modern-day Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth.
- Becky Little
- Life Raft: Invented by Maria E. Beasley in 1880. In the early 1880s, when a new wave of European immigrants were sailing to the United States, a Philadelphia inventor named Maria E. Beasley designed an improved life raft.
- Fold-Out Bed: Invented by Sarah E. Goode in 1885. In 1885, African American Chicago inventor and furniture store owner, Sarah E. Goode, received a patent for her “Cabinet-Bed.”
- Dishwasher: Invented by Josephine G. Cochran in 1886. Demonstration of an early dishwasher c. 1921. Josephine G. Cochran was a wealthy socialite in Shelbyville, Illinois when she got the idea to invent a dishwasher.
- Car Heater: Invented by Margaret A. Wilcox in 1893. The first person to patent an automobile heater was Margaret A. Wilcox, an engineer in Chicago. Wilcox’s 1893 design used heat from the car’s engine to keep drivers and passengers warm.
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Mar 3, 2005 · Historians have looked at women inventors in the nineteenth century as a group distinct from their male counterparts. In doing so, they have examined deterrents to invention by women, the socioeconomic backgrounds of women inventors, the types and numbers of inventions, and the extent of women's involvement in invention and its consequences.
Background. By 1900, women held only 1% of all U.S. patents. One reason is that throughout the 1800s women faced pervasive discrimination in education. Women therefore had fewer opportunities to gain the technical skills and knowledge that often lead to a successful invention.
Mar 21, 2017 · Who were some of the women inventors omitted from the Patent office’s 1888 list and what were their inventions? One omission is Martha J. Coston; she secured a patent for naval night-time signaling devices in 1859, on behalf of her deceased husband Franklin. This omission by the clerk-compilers might have been justified considering the ...
