Susan Davis Herring

Presented to the Society of Women Engineers, Huntsville chapter,
on March 4, 1999, for Women’s History Month.

As you are well aware, women historically have been under-represented in scientific and technical fields. We know that there are multiple reasons for this, one of the main ones being the cultural stereotypes and definitions of women and men, which, in the Western world, are grounded in the religious and political culture and have been institutionalized through our education and socialization over the centuries. Women have been given limited educational opportunities, have been restricted by law from many activities, and have been excluded from professional societies and publications until close to the end of last century. Over the past 100 years, these limitations have begun to be lifted and doors — and minds — have begun to open.

Today we are seeing far more participation by women in the technical fields. The percentage of women in engineering has increased by about 70 percent in the past ten years — meaning women now represent about 15 percent of the total number of engineers in the U.S. Despite nearly 40 years of activism by the women’s movement, ongoing research shows that many young girls are still getting the message it’s okay to do poorly in math and science, and we still see parents, teachers, and school advisors discourage female students from pursuing academic and career interests in science and engineering, as not suitable or too difficult.

But in reality, there have always been women who applied their common sense and natural abilities to contribute to their world through scientific and technical innovations. A few have been well-known for many generations, to be trotted out and displayed as examples of the rare and exceptional — and depending on who’s speaking, maybe even the aberrant — female scientists or inventors. But more thorough research, most often by women, is revealing a much larger heritage of women active in technology than was previously realized.

 

STORE OF TECHNOLOGIES: https://worldwideinvention.com/store/

 

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One area in which recent scholarship shows women to be prolific is invention. It is ironic that the concept of women as inventors has been belittled — or ignored — by so many of Western history’s male scholars, since it is women, by male definitions, who are seen as intuitive, and invention often reflects an intuitive leap to discover a solution to a problem. But, in a culture in which most women — especially married women — lacked the economic power or legal right to produce or market an invention in their own name, many products and processes developed by women were publicly credited to a husband, a father, a brother, or a male partner, making women’s successes invisible.

Likewise, social pressure against independent thought or action and against personal publicity forced many women to give away their ideas, thereby loosing all credit for them. The public nature of filing for a patent, which requires that the name of the inventor be disclosed, made many women reluctant to expose their identities and, therefore, their inventions. And, until fairly recently, married women in many Western countries could not own or profit from their own inventions because these were legally the property of their husbands, even if they were patented or licensed in the woman’s name.

None of this, however, means that our female ancestors were not prolific inventors. Considering the social, educational, and legal limitations faced by Western women, the record of women’s inventions is outstanding. Patents provide one means of measuring this — although it’s an inadequate and biased one. However, the patent process is a relatively recent reflection of human activity: it was instituted, in most countries, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The original U.S. patent law was passed in 1790. We must recognize that many significant things and processes were invented well before recorded history began.

Autumn Stanley, in her book Mothers and Daughters of Invention, proposes that many of the anonymous inventions which mark human prehistory were developed by women. Since women were responsible for gathering food, they probably identified potential food crops such as grains, tubers, fruits and herbs, and transplanted or sowed them near early tribal settlements. This would qualify as the invention of agriculture. It would also necessitate the development — again, by women — of agricultural implements such as digging sticks, hoes, cultivators, and early plows.

The processing of foods also falls to women in most primitive societies. Grinding roots and grains requires technological development in the form of tools, and storage of perishable food items requires the invention of processes such as drying, jerking, smoking, and pickling. Many foods which we take for granted, such as tapioca and olives, must be chemically processed just in order to be edible. Although proof is impossible to find, Stanley’s argument that women were the leaders in food processing innovations because of their involvement in feeding the extended family or tribe seems to be convincing.

Another field of prehistoric technology which probably fell to women was clothing. Preparation of hides, weaving, and sewing are all activities generally done by women in primitive cultures. The development of preserving, softening, bleaching and dyeing methods for animal skins, the invention of weaving techniques and equipment including carding and spinning, and spindles and looms, methods of dyeing or printing fabrics, and sewing implements such as hooks, needles, scissors, and sinew or fiber threads may all be credited to our unknown fore-mothers.

Care for the young, the old, the sick and the injured may also have been the responsibility of women. Although many primitive cultures found in historical times have medicine men who care for the sick, others have medicine women. Certainly such events as childbirth are the responsibility of women, as are care for infants, the very old, and the physically disabled. Along with knowledge of food processing would come knowledge of herbal medicine and various curative remedies.

None of this prehistory of science and technology can be proven, of course, but certainly it is at least probable that many of our most important inventions were the work of women. As societies advanced, women continued to invent. Following the tradition of “the worker develops the tools,” many modern historians of both technology and women’s history have focused on areas which reflect the so-called “women’s world” delineated by home, hearth, and health. And a great number of women’s inventions can be identified in this world, even within the limited records found in patent offices. In the U.S. prior to 1900, almost 70 percent of women’s patents were classified in this area. This number has now dropped to about 50 percent.

Many food processing devices, for example, have been patented by women. Nineteenth century American women patented everything from apple peelers to mechanical mixers. Their products even include the family favorite, the hand-crank ice cream freezer, which was patented in 1843 by Nancy Johnson. Various cooking devices, including stoves, ovens, kilns, and steam cookers, were both invented and improved by women. The earliest such patent known to be received by a women was awarded in 1789 in England to Mary Howson for a boiler. In the U.S., more than 140 cooking devices were patented by women in the nineteenth century alone.

Emeline Hart, a member of the Shaker community, invented and patented a commercial oven in 1876. This innovative brick oven featured pierced metal shelves to allow even heating, four separate oven compartments, isinglass windows, and a temperature gauge — an almost unheard of luxury at the time. It could hold 60 pies or 70 loaves of bread at once, and had revolving shelves which made checking and removing food simple. The oven was a commercial success and was purchased by many bakeries outside of the Shaker community.

Around the same time, Amanda Theodosia Jones developed the vacuum canning process to preserve food. Her process became the standard canning method in this country following its patent grant in 1873. She also invented a vacuum process for drying food. Many other women held patents on food preservation processes and related products and devices. The frozen food industry owes a great deal to Mary Engle Pennington, who worked during the first half of this century on the industrial processes which made frozen fruits, vegetables, and fish such successful products. Incidentally, she was the first female member of the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers and one of the first female members of the American Chemical Society.

Not all women benefited from their inventions, however. Ellen Eglin, who invented the clothes wringer, sold her patent rights for a pittance rather than market it herself. She believed that if it was known that the wringer was invented by a black woman, white women would not use it.

In the field of health care, cures and treatments were also patented fairly early. Ann Pike, for example, received a British patent in 1760 for an anti-itch ointment. Many other treatments were developed by women but were never patented; they’re known through advertisements in popular magazines and newspapers. Recipes for several of these medications contained natural ingredients which our modern scientific analysis methods have shown to be curative, such as digitalis and natural antibiotics.

A variety of medical instruments and devices were invented and patented invention by women during the nineteenth century, including sterilization techniques and devices, medical beds and chairs, field ambulances and stretchers, splints, and an improved speculum. The modern intravenous drip was developed by a team which included Justine Wanger, who worked during the first half of this century. She also helped develop resuscitation techniques for victims of electric shock, and cryogenic therapy to destroy cancer cells.

A number of helpful devices invention for the disabled have also been invented by women, including a watch and a typewriter for the blind, both invented around 1890. In the 1940s and 50s, Lillian Gilbreth, best known for her work with her husband on management and production techniques, designed a model kitchen for the handicapped, developing many of the apparatus and appliances herself. The ubiquitous trash can with the step-on lever to open the lid is her invention. Ruth Handler invented the first prosthesis for mastectomy patients. She’s probably better known as the inventor the Barbie doll.

Mechanical inventions by women are frequently ignored, or are credited to men, or are mistakenly assigned to household categories by patent offices. However, women have a long history of inventing and improving sophisticated machines. Women in primitive societies used levers, pulleys, screws, and flywheels. Getting even more primitive, Jane Goodall showed that female chimpanzees select and use tools, such as termite sticks and nut-cracking clubs, more than male chimps do. Classical writers credit Hypatia of Alexandria, who lived in the fourth century A.D., with the invention of the astrolabe for astronomical measurement, an hydrometer to measure specific gravity of liquids, and several other test and measurement instruments. Women also made important contributions to printing technology from early cloth printing to improvements in moveable type design and registration techniques.

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we know that women invented and improved machinery and industrial designs. One of our country’s earliest successful industries — the straw bonnet business — was built on several related inventions, all by women. It began in 1798, with Betsey Metcalf’s development of an improved method of braiding straw to make straw bonnets. Metcalf refused to patent her invention, feeling that the publicity would be inappropriate. Instead, she taught the technique freely to anyone who was interested. Her invention formed the basis of a flourishing cottage industry as women and children produced the popular bonnets in homes and schools throughout the Eastern states. Mary Dixon Kies helped the industry expand in 1809 by developing and patenting a process for weaving the straw for bonnets, rather than braiding it. American bonnets were sold widely in both the United States and Europe, and this was one of the few American industries which prospered even during the commercial slump following the War of 1812. Mary Kies was the first woman to receive a U.S. patent after the Patent Act of 1790 was signed, for her straw weaving process.

Women are also credited with at least assisting in the development of the McCormick reaper, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, the Davenport electric motor, the Jacquard loom, the Burden horse shoe machine, and Elias Howe’s sewing machine, although all of these inventions are attributed to men. Controversy over who was primarily responsible for these inventions continues to run rampant, especially for the reaper, the cotton gin, and the sewing machine. The sewing machine has a long history of improvements designed and patented by women. Helen Augusta Blanchard alone patented 26 sewing machine improvements during her lifetime. Also in the “household device” category of inventions are the powered dishwasher, invented by Josephine Cochran in 1889, and the rotary washer, one of the most successful early clothes washing machines, patented by Margaret Plunkett Colvin in 1871.

The earliest recorded British women patentee was Sarah Jerome, who received two patents in the 1630’s for lumber cutting devices. She was not the only woman actively involved in lumber and construction fields. Tabitha Babbitt, another Shaker woman, invented the circular saw around 1810. Anne Pauline Crepin of Paris patented the bandsaw in 1846, and Henriette Tuyssuzian received a British patent for another bandsaw design in 1881.

The Civil War was a watershed for women inventors in the United States, with more women receiving patents between 1860 and 1865 (86) than in the previous 70 years (72). In the next four years the number more than doubled (to 184), and has kept growing every since. Sarah Mather patented a submarine telescope in 1864 and Henrietta Vansittart invented and patented an improved screw propeller for ships in 1868. Martha Knight developed a machine to produce flat-bottomed paper bags, which was patented in 1870. She also appears to have been the first woman in the U.S. to fight and win a patent suit. A man who had seen the model of her machine stole the design and filed for a patent on it. She took him to court over her patent right. He claimed she couldn’t possibly have the mechanical knowledge needed to invent such a complex machine, but Knight presented both witnesses and extensive documentation — including drawings, sketches, journal entries, and parts of the first model — which backed up her claim. After her success with the paper bag machine, she went on to develop and patent several other machines, including rotary engines and automatic tools. Martha Coston, who developed and patented a safety flare for ships in her husband’s name after his death, also invented the precursor to the flare gun. She patented this design in her own name in 1871. Emily Tassey invented an apparatus for raising sunken vessels, a dredging pump, and an improved siphon pump design, receiving four patents in 1876 alone. Eliza Murfey, another prolific mechanical designer, received 23 patents between 1870 and 1875, including several for materials and processes for packing journals, bearings, and pistons in steam engines. Mary Jane Montgomery was cited in Scientific American in 1903 as a “professional woman inventor.” The article mentioned her work on warships and locomotive wheels, but she also was joint holder of a patent for a bridge design, and patented a machine for punching corrugated metal sheets.

As education for women improved and expanded and more women became accepted — and employed — by firms such as Westinghouse and Edison, their contributions became more widely recognized. Beulah Louise Henry was hired specifically as an inventor by Nicholas Machine Works in New York City in 1939. Scientific American had listed her as an important inventor as early as 1924. She had her own laboratory and a technical staff at the Nicholas Works and is credited with about 50 individual inventions, many of which also required her to develop the tools and processes needed for their production.

Today, just over 7 percent of U.S. design patents and plant patents, 5.5 percent of chemical technology patents, and 2.7 and 1.6 percent, respectively, of mechanical and electrical patents include a woman inventor. Almost half of the total number of patents granted to women during the last twenty years pertain to chemical technology. A couple of the outstanding examples here include Stephanie Kwolek, who discovered the polymer solvent that led to the development of Kevlar, and Janet Rideout, co-inventor of AZT.

March, as Women’s History Month, is a good time for us to consider our past. Being aware of the history of women inventors gives us both pride in our heritage and ammunition to fight prejudice as we strive for real equity and opportunity. As even this brief survey shows, women’s innovations and inventions have been instrumental in the development of Western society and industry. Many of the women I have mentioned struggled against prejudice and indifference, and created their ideas and products in their own homes, without the benefits of a technical education, laboratories or workshops, proper equipment, assistants, or federal or corporate funding and support. But they succeeded nonetheless, and are finally being recognized for their work. I hope you can take some inspiration from them.

Thank you.

A Brief Bibliography on Women Inventors

Durack, Katherine T. “Gender, Technology, and the History of Technical Communication.” Technical Communication Quarterly 6(3), Summer 1997, pp. 249-60.

Fitzroy, Nancy Deloye. “It’s Time to Recognize the Contributions of Women Inventors.” USA Today Magazine, 127(2644), January 1999, p. 66.

Khan, B. Zorina. “Married Women’s Property Laws and Female Commercial Activity: Evidence from United States Patent Records, 1790-1895.” The Journal of Economic History, 56(2), June 1996, pp. 356-88.

“Industrial History Includes Women Inventors.” National Engineer, April 1997, pp. 10-12.

Macdonald, Anne L. Feminine Ingenuity: How Women Inventors Changed America. NY: Ballantine, 1992.

Stanley, Autumn. Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1993.

Vare, Ethlie Ann and Greg Ptacek. Mothers of Invention: From the Bra to the Bomb, Forgotten Women and Their Unforgettable Ideas. NY: William Morrow, 1987.

Warrick, Pamela. “Mothers of Invention.” U.S. Woman Engineer, March/April 1993, pp. 22-23.