Women Invent!: Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped Our World
WOMEN INVENT Conner of Garden Grove Iowa describes her hay handling device an intricate system of ropes and pulleys connected with a hayfork and a carriage To write of it May could not have been merely around her farm she had to have been in the barn measuring dis tances and angles figuring weights and plotting directions She was a busy thinking woman And I discovered every other woman inven tor to be the same I grew to admire each one I hope that my depic tion of their involvements and their activities does justice to their remarkable accomplishments I am honored to tell their
Fig 3 1 Necessity Calls We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people including women believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong revelusively in the home The world cannot afford the loss of the talents of half of its peo ple if we are to solve the many problems which beset us Dr Rosalyn Yalow Nobel Prize winner 1977 he horse trotted at a steady pace pulling the open carriage It was a pleasant day in the mid 1880s in Baltimore Maryland The family riding in the countryside especially the mother and father talked of the birds that flitted about Their daughter was too busy to chat She was watching the birds as they flew from branch to branch Then a loud blast an explosion fright ened the horse The little girl turned to look and saw the horse rear saw its front hooves fly into the air and then down again The carriage rocked unsteadily Her mother and father held onto her and the carriage Then the horse began to run gallop too fast much too fast The carriage was tipping to one side then another The little girl screamed How were they going to get the carriage free of the run away
WOMEN INVENT Fig 7 WITNESSES INVENTOR Anne H Close BY M D Blouce ATTORNEYS Patent drawing for Annie Chilton's Horse Detacher and Brake That was exactly the question Annie Chilton answered when she invented a device that would do just that In 1891 the Baltimore woman gained a patent for a Horse Detacher and Brake a device that would prevent accidents like the one about to happen in the story above Annie saw a problem that needed to be solved Then she created a solution with her invention She is only one of many women inven tors before and after her who did the same So what are inventions exactly An invention is a discovery of something new that is useful to people People might see it and say Wow that s great I could use that Like what In 1976 in another part of the world Magdalena Maggie Villaruz of the Philippines wanted to grow rice in the fields of her farm but the fields were very wet Tractors used to cultivate the wet fields got stuck in the mud That is until Maggie invented Turtle
Necessity Calls Power Tillers a small tractor that can be pushed by hand It doesn't get stuck in the mud it floats She obtained a patent in the United Kingdom and Japan in 1981 She has since gained nineteen other patents for inventions of farming machinery and was awarded the International Federation of Inventors Association Cup as the Most Outstanding Woman Inventor of her country in 1995 Annie needed a way to stop a runaway horse Maggie needed to be able to farm in her fields More than five million inventions have been patented in America and millions of others have been patented in Canada Europe and other areas of the world in the last few hundred years Inventions by women are included in those millions Women like men have invented what they needed Women of the 1800s and early 1900s who lived on farms in America needed harvesting equipment supplies and equipment for raising livestock and poultry and tools for planting and tilling So they invented and patented Other women received patents for gar den tools and equipment Others invented insecticides to get rid of critters that killed the plants Anna Corey Baldwin the wife of a dairy farmer in New Jersey received four dairy related patents in the 1860s and 1870s including one for cooling milk quickly and one for gloves that promised to help speed up the milking of the cows In 1887 Hannah Harger of Manchester Iowa worried about all the flies that were bothering her babies invented and gained a patent for the screen door In 1892 Sarah Boone an African American womano New Haven Connecticut designed an ironing board that made it easier to iron the sleeves of ladies garments and mens coats In 1917 May Conner of Garden Grove Iowa invented a hay handling device that used a well planned system of ropes and pulleys to make it possible to eas ily transport hay to a storage area The object of my invention she wrote in her patent is for use in stacking hay or moving hay away in a barn for carrying hay along a stock or barn Her device was connected to a carriage and to forks used to move the
