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Inspiration June 26, 2018
It’s time to start thanking women for simplifying our everyday lives. Inventions by women include the windshield wiper, liquid paper, signal flares, paper bags and more.
The creative field of inventing often goes to men. Yes, we thank Thomas Edison for the lightbulb and Henry Ford for the Ford Model T car. But, women inventors don’t get enough credit.
Here are 15 inventions made by women you may not have known about.
Washing dishes can be tedious. No one wants to wash plates after a meal, especially if you were the chef. All you want to do is eat the dinner you just cooked. Yellow gloves for the next half-hour is not the business after getting stuffed.
Josephine Garis Cochran wanted a more efficient way for her servants to wash dishes faster. In 1886, she got to work and measured the dishes and made wire compartments. She built the dishwasher herself.
Nobody likes to touch trash cans. It’s bad enough that we have to hold bathroom doors on our way out. Lillian Gilbreth was a scientist and well-known for her innovative works on kitchen designs and appliances. In the early 1900s, she invented items to make it easier around the kitchen with the foot-pedal trash bin, electric food mixer and putting shelves inside the refrigerator.
Fun facts! Gilbreth was an engineer and psychologist. Two of her 12 children, Frank Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth mentioned her inventions in the famous novel, “Cheaper by the Dozen.”
Working in a Massachusetts paper bag plant in 1869 led Margaret Knight believed it would be easier to pack items in bags with flat bottoms. That idea inspired her to create a machine that would automatically fold and glue paper-bag bottoms. Her invention immediately made an immense impact on the paper industry. Because of her, we’re able to carry more groceries at a time.
If it weren’t for Mary Anderson patenting the first windshield wipers in 1903, we’d probably drive unsafely in the rain and snow. The idea, adopted when she was on a trolley in New York on a snowy day. She noticed the driver constantly stopped the vehicle to wipe the windshield. Cadillac was the first car manufacturer to include windshield wipers. Other car companies followed soon after.
Mechanical engineer Margaret Wilcox invented the first car heater in 1893.
Born and raised in Chicago, she created the car heater to make traveling more comfortable for drivers on a winter day. It became the most valuable invention for those living in the Windy City and soon all over the nation.
Back in the 1950s, babies stained bed sheets and soiled their cloth diapers left and right. In hopes to minimize the amount of cleaning with her baby, Marion Donovan invented the disposable diapers. She grabbed her sewing machine, took a shower curtain and after several attempts, a waterproof diaper was made. The first one was sold at Saks Fifth Avenue.
That’s right! Beer! While there’s no specific individual woman who first created beer, research shows that brewing beer was a woman’s domain. According to a Telegraph article, historian Jane Peyton conducted a research that thousands of years ago only women brewed beer and ran taverns in Mesopotamia and Sumer. Now, it’s time to stop looking at beer as just a “man’s drink.” Cheers to that!
Elizabeth Magie first created The Landlord’s Game to educate players with Georgism. It’s the economic theory of Henry George that values of property, resources and opportunities should be equal to society. The game taught players the disadvantages to renting, the ropes you need to learn about buying property, and tax owners. She patented the board game in 1904, where a man named Charles Darrow rearranged the board design 30 years later. Parker Brothers bought Magie’s original game instead.
Famous American writer, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, invented alphabet blocks. To this day, it’s one of the more popular toys and learning tools for children. She made learning for babies easier and fun.
She was known to have adamant anti-suffrage ideals about the importance to maintain the traditional role of women often conveyed in her books.
Thanks to Whitney, nowadays children have this educational toy as an option. The wooden blocks with the colored letters on them still help children with their ABCs. She made learning for babies a lot easier and fun.
Martha Coston invented the signal flares, originally known as Coston’s marine signals. Her late husband left a notebook and she found this failed idea for signal flares. She fixed and improved the idea. Boom! She invented the S.O.S. tool. In the late 1850s, crew ships were limited to colored flags and lanterns. Coston spent 10 years working with chemists and pyrotechnics to improve the invention.
Maria Telkes, physical chemist and biophysicist, invented the first solar-heating system, but the Hungarian immigrant didn’t do it alone. She had the help of architect Eleanor Raymond. Together, the women created a leading sustainable product and worked on the Solar Energy Research Project.
Imagine a world where you had scribbles on your paper from making written mistakes with a pen. Bette Nesmith Graham, secretary, had had enough. She saved the day in 1958 when she created liquid paper, white tempera paint to cover errors. She spent years in her kitchen making the perfect formula.
Before call waiting and caller ID was made, people didn’t know who called before they picked up the phone. There was also the issue of not receiving other important calls while being on the phone. American physicist Shirley Jackson reduced all of those telephone problems and invented the necessary feature.
Thanks to Stephanie Kwolek, DuPont chemist, we have the lightweight and high-tensile Kevlar. She discovered a fiber which she applied to create synthetic fiber and perfected the material, making it five times stronger than steel. The bullet-proof vest now keeps soldiers and cops safe during their dangerous day-to-day lives.
In 1897, Anna Connelly patented the idea for the first outdoor fire escape with an external staircase. She was one of the first women to register a patent after the Civil War. Her model became a part of many building safety codes all across the United States. Not only did Connelly improve public safety, but she designed a cost-effective invention.
These inventions deserve recognition. Women inventions changed our lives for the better.
