Woman in Science — Women as Inventors, Part 1

CHAPTER X WOMEN AS INVENTORS

"There have been very learned women as there have been women warriors, but there have never been women inventors."

[227] Thus wrote Voltaire with that flippancy and cocksureness which was so characteristic of the author of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_--a man who was ever ready to give, offhand, a categorical answer to any question that came before him for discussion.

His countryman, Proudhon, expressed the same opinion in other words when he wrote, _Les femmes n'ont rien invente, pas meme leur quenouille_--women have invented nothing, not even their distaff.

Had these two writers thoroughly sifted the evidence available, even in their day, for a proper consideration of this interesting subject, they would, both of them, have reached a very different conclusion from that which is expressed in the sentences just quoted.

Had they consulted the records of antiquity, they would have learned that most of the earliest and most important inventions were attributed to women; and, had they studied the reports of explorers among the savage tribes of the modern world, they would have found that these early legends and traditions regarding the inventions of women were fully confirmed by what was being done in their own time.

Man's first needs were food, shelter and clothing; and tradition in all parts of the world is unanimous in ascribing to woman the invention, in essentially their present forms, of all the arts most conducive to the preservation and well-being of our race.

In Egypt, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, the inventors of specially useful things were, as a reward of their deserts, enrolled among the gods, as were certain heroes among the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Foremost among these was Isis, who laid the foundation of agriculture by the introduction of the culture of wheat and other cereals.

Before her time the Egyptians lived on roots and herbs.

In lieu of these crude articles of food, Isis gave them bread and other more wholesome aliments.

She invented the process of making linen and was the first to apply a sail to the propulsion of a boat.

To her also was attributed the art of embalming, the discovery of many medicines and the beginnings of Egyptian literature.

Even more prominent was Pallas Athene, one of the greatest divinities of the Greeks.

Virgil, in his _Georgics_, invokes her as "Inventor, Pallas, of the fatt'ning oil, Thou founder of the plow and the plowman's toil."

But not only was she regarded as the _oleae inventrix_-inventress of the olive--as Virgil phrases it, but also as the inventor of all handicrafts, whether of women or men.

Like Isis, she was deemed the originator of agriculture and many of the mechanic arts.

But, above all, she was the inventor of musical instruments and those plastic and graphic arts which have for ages placed Greece in the forefront of civilization and culture.

From the beginning it was woman who first made use of wool and flax for textile fabrics; and of this prehistoric woman one can affirm what Solomon, in his _Book of Proverbs_, said of the virtuous woman of his day: "She seeketh wool and flax and worketh diligently with her hands;

She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff."

She was also the first one to weave cotton and silk.

It was Mama Oclo, the wife of Manco Capac, as the Inca historian, Garcilasso de la Vega, tells us, who taught the women of ancient Peru "to sew and weave cotton and wool and to make clothes for themselves, their husbands and children."

And it was a woman, Se-ling-she, the wife of the emperor, Hwang-te, who lived nearly three thousand years before Christ, to whom the most ancient Chinese writers assign the discovery of silk.

Her name is perpetuated in the name China, the goddess of silkworms, and under this appellation she still receives divine honors.

The preparation and weaving of silk were introduced into Japan by four Chinese girls, and the new industry soon became there, as in China, one of the chief sources, as it is to-day, of the country's wealth.

To perpetuate the memory of these four pioneer silk weavers the grateful Japanese erected a temple in their honor in the province of Setsu.

According to tradition, the eggs of the silk moth and the seed of the mulberry tree were conveyed to India, concealed in the lining of her headdress, by a Chinese princess.

She was thus instrumental in establishing in the region watered by the Indus and the Ganges the same industry which her countrywomen had introduced into the Land of the Rising Sun.

Cashmere shawls and attar of roses, the costliest of perfumes, are attributed to an Indian empress, Nur Mahal, whom her husband, in view of her achievements, as well as on account of his passionate love for her, called "The Light of the World."

[228] And what shall we say of those exquisite creations of woman's brain and hand--needle-point and pillow lace?

These two inventions, like the manufacture of silk, have given employment to tens of thousands of women throughout the world; and, in such countries as Italy, Belgium and France, where lace-making has received special attention, they have for centuries been most prolific sources of revenue.

Silk fabrics in ancient Rome were worth their weight in gold.

The finest specimens of point lace are, even to-day, as highly prized as precious stones, and, like the great masterpieces of plastic art, are handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation.

In no other instance, except possibly in the hairspring of a watch, is there such an extraordinary difference in value between the raw material and the finished product as there is in the case of the finest thread lace.

A great sensation was caused in Italy a few decades ago when a humble workwoman, Signora Bassani, succeeded in rediscovering the peculiar stitch of the celebrated Venetian point, which had been lost for centuries.

She was at once granted a patent for her invention, which was by her countrymen regarded as an event of national importance.

After painting and sculpture, probably no art has contributed more to the development of the esthetic sense among the nations of the world than has the art whose chief tools are the needle and the bobbin in the deft hands of a beauty-loving woman.

If the name of the first lace-maker had not been lost in the mists of antiquity, it is reasonable to suppose that she, too, would long since have had a monument erected to her memory, as well as the weavers of silk and makers of attar of roses and cashmere shawls.

She was surely as deserving of such an honor.

More conclusive information respecting woman as an inventor is, strange as it may appear, afforded by a systematic study of the various races of mankind which are still in a state of savagery.

Such a study discloses the interesting fact that woman, contrary to the declaration of Proudhon, has not only been the inventor of the distaff, but that she has furthermore--pace Voltaire--been the inventor of all the peaceful arts of life, and the inventor, too, of the earliest forms of nearly all the mechanical devices now in use in the world of industry.

Architecture, as well as many other things, was credited by the ancient Greeks to Minerva.

This was a poetical way of stating the fact--now generally accepted by men of science--that women were the first homemakers.

But the first home was a very simple and a very humble structure.

When not a cave, it was a simple shelter made of bark or skins, sufficient to afford protection to the mother and her child.

Subsequently it was a lodge made of earth, of stone or wattle work or adobe.

Women were, in the light of anthropology, as well as in that of mythology and tradition, the first to discover the nutritive and medicinal values of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots and vegetables.

They were consequently the first gardeners and agriculturists and the first to build up a materia medica.

While men were engaged in the chase or in warfare, women were gradually perfecting those divers domestic arts which, in the course of time, became their recognized specialties.

They soon found that it was better to cultivate certain food plants and trees than to depend on them for nourishment in the wild state.

This was particularly true in the case of such useful and widely distributed species as wheat, rice, maize, the yam, potato, banana and cassava.

At first most of these food products were used in the raw state, but woman's quick inventive genius was not long in making one of the most important and far-reaching discoveries--a method for producing fire.

In a certain sense this was the greatest discovery ever made, and the Greeks showed their appreciation of the value of it by asserting that fire was stolen from heaven.

Considering its multifarious uses in heating and cooking, thereby immensely adding to the comfort and well-being of primitive man, we are not surprised that in certain parts of the world fire has always been considered something sacred, and that the old Romans instituted Vestal Virgins, and the ancient Peruvians Virgins of the Sun, to preserve this precious element and have it ever ready when required for sacrifice or for any of their various liturgical functions.

If any one ever deserved a "monument more durable than bronze," it was the woman who, "on the edge of time," first drew the Promethean spark from a piece of pyrites by striking it with flint or produced it by the friction of two pieces of wood.

After building a home and establishing in it a fireplace for the preparation of food, woman's next concern was to secure more raiment than was afforded by the traditional fig leaf.

This she found in the bark of certain trees, in the fiber of hemp and cotton and in the wool of sheep and goats.

With these and her distaff she spun thread, and from the thread thus obtained she was by means of her primitive loom--likewise her invention--able to provide all kinds of textile fabrics for clothing for herself and family.

But there was much more to invent before the home of primitive man, or rather primitive woman, could be considered as fairly equipped.

Furniture and culinary utensils were required, and these, too, were provided by the deft and cunning fingers of woman.

She was the first potter and the first basketmaker; and anyone who has lived among the savages of any land, especially among the aborigines in the interior of South America, knows what an important part is played in domestic economy by native basketry and ceramic ware.

Both of these articles were at first of the simplest character, but woman's innate esthetic sense soon enabled her to produce those highly ornate specimens of pottery and basketry that are so highly prized in the public and private collections of this country and Europe.

The first device for converting grain into flour was, like the many other articles already named, the invention of woman.

Whether the simple mortar and pestle of the North American Indian, or the Mexican metate and muller, or the Irish quern, it was, in every case, the product of woman's brain and handiwork, as it was also the basal prototype of our most improved types of flouring mills.

And so was the soapstone pot--the predecessor of the iron or brass kettle--a woman's invention, as well as many similar contrivances for preparing food.

But what is probably the most remarkable culinary invention of woman in the state of savagery is her unique contrivance for converting the poisonous root of the _manihot utilissima_--the staple food of tropical America--into a wholesome and nutritious aliment.

It is a bag, called _matapi_, which serves both as a press and as a sieve.

For the inhabitants of the vast basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco, where the chief articles of diet are derived from the manihot and the plantain, this invention of woman is the most important ever made and ranks in importance with the discovery by the same skilled food purveyor of the dietetic value of manihot itself.

The first knife was a woman's invention, as the arrow-head and the spear point were the inventions of her hunter husband.

It was in the beginning a most primitive implement; but, whether in the form of a simple flake of flint of obsidian, or in that of an Eskimo ulu--the woman's knife--it was the archetype of all the forms of cutlery now in use.

With this rude knife the primitive housewife skinned and carved the game brought to her by her male companion.

With it she scraped the interior of the hide and cut it up into articles of clothing.

She was thus the first furrier and tailor.

With it she made the first sandals and moccasins, and, in doing so, became the first shoemaker and the original St. Crispin.

To woman, the originator of the first home, is due also the invention of the oven and the chimney.

She was also the first maker of salt--that all-important condiment and sanitary agent--and the first to obtain nitre from wood ashes.

She was the first engineer, as is evinced in her invention of the parbuckle and in the bamboo conduit, which was the predecessor of the great canals of Babylonia[229] and the imposing aqueducts of ancient Rome.

Important, however, as are all the foregoing inventions, we must not forget what was an equally important contribution by woman to the welfare and progress of our race--the domestication of animals.

No discovery after that of artificially producing fire has contributed more toward the development of our race than the taming of milk- and fleece-bearing animals, like the cow, the sheep, the goat and the llama, or of burden-bearing animals, like the horse, the ass, the camel and the reindeer, or of hunting and watching animals like the faithful, ubiquitous dog.

For, in the first place, the domestication of these supremely useful animals diminished man's labor as burden bearers.

It likewise supplemented the fecundity of women and facilitated the multiplication of the race, because it supplied to the child a nourishment that previously could be obtained only from the mother, who had been obliged to suckle her young several years longer than was necessary after the friendly goat and cow came to her aid.

Still another consequence of the domestication of animals was that it immensely diminished the amount of woman's care and labor, afforded her the necessary leisure to develop the arts of refinement, and stimulated intellectual growth in a way that otherwise would have been impossible.

It is often stated by certain writers who love to indulge in fanciful speculations that women inventors got their ideas as home builders and weavers and potters from nest-building birds, from web-weaving spiders, and from clay workers like termites and mud wasps.

Be this as it may, the fact remains in all its inspiring truth that, in the matter of industrialism, as opposed to the militancy of man, we can unhesitatingly declare, with Virgil, _Dux femina facti_--woman was the leader in all the arts of peace--arts which have been slowly perfected through the ages until they present the extraordinary development which we now witness.

When we contemplate the splendid porcelain wares of Meissen and Sevres, or the countless varieties of cutlery produced in the factories of Sheffield, or the beautiful textile fabrics from the looms of Lowell and Manchester, or the delicate silks woven in the famous establishments of Lombardy and Southern France, or the countless forms of footwear made in Lynn and Chicago, or the exquisite furs brought from Siberia and the Pribyloff Islands, and dyed in Leipsic and London, or the astonishing output of food products from the factories of Pittsburgh and the immense roller mills of Minneapolis, we little think that the colossal wheels of these vast and varied industries were set in motion by the inventive genius of woman in the dim and distant prehistoric past.

And yet such is the case.

Her handiwork from the earliest pottery may be traced through its manifold stages from its first rude beginnings to the most gorgeous creations of ceramic art.

The primeval knife of flint or obsidian has become the keen tool of tempered steel; the simple distaff has issued in the intricate Jacquard loom; the metate and pestle actuated by a woman's arm have, by a long process of evolution, developed into our mammoth roller mills impelled by water power, steam or electricity.

[230] But these extraordinary changes from the rude implements of prehistoric time to the complicated machinery of the present is but a change of kind, not one of principle.

It is a change due to specialization of work which became possible only when men, liberated from the avocations of hunting and warfare, were able to take up the occupations of women, and develop them in the manner with which we are now familiar.

Why men, rather than women, should have achieved this work of specialization; whether it was due to social causes or to woman's physical and mental organization, or to these various factors combined, we need not inquire; but such is the fact.

Whereas in primitive times every woman having a home was a cook, a butcher, a baker, a potter, a weaver, a cutler, a miller, a tanner, a furrier, an engineer, man, in assuming the work which was originally exclusively feminine and performed by one and the same person, has subdivided and specialized by improved forms of machinery and otherwise, so that what is now done is accomplished more rapidly and to better purpose, and with correspondingly greater results in the development of industry and in the progress of civilization.

And the remarkable fact is that many of the most important of these improvements due to specialization have been made within the memory of those yet living, while still others have been originated in quite recent years.

Nevertheless, great as has been the work of specialization and coordination in every department of human industry during the last few decades, it is, to judge by the reports of the Patent Office, as yet in little more than its initial stage.