Woman in Science — Women as Inventors, Part 2

We are now prepared for the consideration of the part woman has taken in this specializing movement and for a discussion of her share in modern inventions and in the improvements of those manifold inventions which were due to her genius and industry untold ages ago.

Considering the short time during which her inventive mind has been specially active, and the many handicaps which have been imposed on her, the wonder is not that she has achieved so little in comparison with man, but rather that she has accomplished so much.

The first woman to receive a patent in the United States was Mary Kies.

It was issued May 5, 1809, for a process of straw-weaving with silk or thread.

Six years later Mary Brush was granted a patent for a corset.

It seems to have been quite satisfactory, for no other patent for this article of feminine attire was issued to a woman until 1841, when one was granted to Elizabeth Adams.

During the thirty-two years which elapsed between the issuing of a patent to Mary Kies and Elizabeth Adams, but twenty other patents were granted to women.

The chief of these were for weaving hats from grass, manufacturing moccasins, whitening leghorn straw, for a sheet-iron shovel, a cook stove and a machine for cutting straw and fodder.

During the decade following 1841, fourteen patents were issued to as many different women.

Among the articles patented by them were an ice-cream freezer, a weighing scale and a fan attachment for a rocking chair.

It was not recorded, however, that this last invention, valuable as it was apparently, ever became particularly popular.

But by far the most remarkable of woman's inventions during this period was a submarine telescope and lamp, for which a patent was awarded in 1845 to Sarah Mather.

From 1851 to 1861, twenty-eight patents were issued to women--just twice the number awarded them during the preceding decade.

Most of these patents were for articles of domestic use or feminine apparel.

Four of them, however, comprised a scale for instrumental music, for mounting fluid lenses, a fountain pen and an improvement in reaping and mowing machines.

The following decade is remarkable for the wonderful increase in the number of inventions due to women, for there was a sudden jump from twenty-eight to four hundred and forty-one patents awarded them between the years 1861 and 1871. Women now began to have confidence in their inventive faculties, and, no longer content with exercising their genius on articles of clothing and culinary utensils, sewing, washing and churning machines, they began to devote their attention to objects that were entirely foreign to their ordinary home activities.

This is clearly evinced by the patents they obtained for such inventions as improvements in locomotive wheels, devices for reducing straw and other fibrous substances for the manufacture of paper pulp, improvements in corn huskers, low-water indicators, steam and other whistles, corn plows, a method of constructing screw propellers, improvements in materials for packing journals and bearings, in fire alarms, thermometers, railroad car heaters, improvements in lubricating railway journals, in conveyors of smoke and cinders for locomotives, in pyrotechnic night signals, burglar alarms, railway car safety apparatus, in apparatus for punching corrugated metals, desulphurizing ores and other similar inventions in the domain of mechanical engineering, inventions that, at first blush, would seem to be quite alien to the genius and capacity of woman.

From now on women's inventions in the United States increased at an extraordinary rate, for from 1871 until July 1, 1888, when the first government report was made on the patents issued to women inventors, she had to her credit nearly two thousand inventions, many of which were of prime importance.

[231] During the seven years following 1888 she was awarded twenty-five hundred and twenty-six patents--more than the total number that had been granted her during the preceding seventy-nine years.

Between 1895 and 1910, three thousand six hundred and fifteen more patents were placed to her credit, making a grand total for her first century of inventive achievement of eight thousand five hundred and ninety-six patents.

No Patent Office reports are available since 1910, but the number of inventions for which women have received patents since Mary Kies was awarded hers on May 5, 1809, for "straw-weaving with silk or thread," cannot be far from ten thousand.

This fact will, doubtless, be a revelation to that large class of men who still seem to share the views of Voltaire and Proudhon that women are incapable of inventing even the simplest article of domestic use.

The following story well illustrates the prevailing ignorance regarding the part women have taken in the invention of certain articles that are so common that most people think they were never patented.

"I was out driving once with an old farmer in Vermont," writes Mrs. Ada C.

Bowles, "and he told me, 'You women may talk about your rights, but why don't you invent something?'

I answered, 'Your horse's feed bag and the shade over his head were both of them invented by women.'

The old fellow was so taken aback that he was barely able to gasp, 'Do tell!'

" Had he investigated further he would have found that the flynet on his horse's back, the tugs and other harness trimmings, the shoes on his horse's feet[232] and the buggy seat he then occupied were all the inventions of women.

He would, doubtless, also have discovered that the currycomb he had used before starting out on his drive, as well as the snap hook of the halter and the checkrein and the stall unhitching device were likewise the inventions of members of that sex whose capacity he was so disposed to depreciate; for women have been awarded patents--in some instances several of them--for all the articles that have been mentioned.

He might furthermore have learned that the fellies in his buggy wheels and his daughter's side saddle had been made under women's patents; and that, to complete his surprise and confusion, the leather used in his harness had been sewn by a machine patented by a woman who was not only an inventor but who was also for many years the manager and proprietor of a large harness factory in New York City.

What particularly arrests one's attention in reading the Patent Office reports is not only the large number of inventions by women, but also the very wide range of the devices which they embrace.

It is not surprising to find them inventing and improving culinary utensils, house furniture and furnishings, toilet articles, wearing apparel and stationery, trunks and bags, toys and games, designs for printed and textile fabrics, for boxes and baskets, screens, awnings, baby carriers, musical instruments, appliances for washing and cleaning, attachments for bicycles and type-writing machines, art, educational and medical appliances; for these things are in keeping with their proper _metier_;

but it is surprising for those who are not familiar with the history of modern inventions to learn of the share women have had in inventing and improving agricultural implements, building appurtenances, motors of various kinds, plumbing apparatus, theatrical stage mechanisms, and, above all, countless railway appliances from a coupling or fender to an apparatus for sanding railroad tracks, or a device for unloading boxcars.

Those who are still of the opinion of Voltaire and Proudhon--and their name is legion--respecting woman's inventive powers, might be willing to accord to her the capacity to design a new form of clothes pin, or hair crimper, or rouge pad, or complexion mask, or powder puff, or baby jumper; but they would limit her ability to contrivances of this character.

But what would these same people say if they were told that over and above the things just mentioned for which many women have actually received patents, the much depreciated female sex had been granted patents for locomotive wheels, stuffing boxes, railway car safety apparatus, life rafts, cut-offs for hydraulic and other engines, street cars, mining machines, furnaces for smelting ores, sound-deadening attachments for railway cars, feed pumps and transfer apparatus for traction cars, machines for driving hoops on to barrels, apparatus for destroying vegetation on and removing snow from railroads, coke crushers, artificial stone compositions, elevated railways, new forms of cattle cars, dams and reservoirs, welding seams of pipes and hardening iron, alloys for bell metal and alloys to resemble silver, methods of refining and hardening copper, processes for concentrating ores, improvement in elevators and designs for raising sunken vessels?

And yet, incredible as it may appear to these scoffers at woman's genius, patents for all these inventions, methods and processes--many of them of exceeding value--and for hundreds of others of a similar nature, have been issued to women during recent years.

And the activity of the fair inventors, far from abating, is becoming daily more pronounced, and promises to reward their efforts with far greater triumphs.

Indeed, women are becoming so active in the numerous fields of invention--even in such unlikely ones as metallurgy and civil, mechanical and electrical engineering--that they bid fair to rival men in what they have long regarded as their peculiar specialty.

In 1892 a woman in New York was granted two patents, one for a process of malting beer and the other for hooping malt liquors.

These inventions, however, are not so foreign to the avocation of woman as they at first appear.

For, if we may believe the teachings of ethnology and prehistoric archaeology in this matter, women were the first brewers.

The one, therefore, who two decades ago secured the two patents just mentioned was but taking up anew an occupation in which her sex furnished the first invention many thousand years ago.

An instructive fact touching woman's inventive achievements is that her fullest success is coincident with her enlarged opportunities for education, and began with the breaking down of the prejudices which so long existed against her having anything to do with the development of the mechanical or industrial arts.

When one recollects that the public schools of Boston, established in 1642, were not open to girls until a century and a half later, and then only for the most elementary branches and for but one-half the year; and that girls did not have the benefit of a high school education in the center of New England culture until 1852; and when one furthermore recalls the attitude of the general public toward women and girls extending their activities beyond the nursery and the kitchen, it is easy to understand that there was not much encouragement for them to exercise their inventive talent, even if they had felt an inclination to do so.

The experience of Miss Margaret Knight, of Boston, who in 1871 was awarded a valuable patent for making a paper-bag machine is a case in point and well illustrates some of the difficulties that women inventors had to contend with only a few decades ago.

"As a child," she writes to a friend, "I never cared for the things that girls usually do; dolls never had any charms for me.

I couldn't see the sense of coddling bits of porcelain with senseless faces; the only things I wanted were a jackknife, a gimlet and pieces of wood.

My friends were horrified.

I was called a tomboy, but that made very little impression on me.

I sighed sometimes because I was not like other girls, but wisely concluded that I couldn't help it, and sought further consolation from my tools.

I was always making things for my brothers.

Did they want anything in the line of playthings, they always said, 'Mattie will make them for us.'

I was famous for my kites, and my sleds were the envy and admiration of all the boys in town.

I'm not surprised at what I've done; I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly."

Even after she had demonstrated her skill as an inventor, Miss Knight had to encounter the skepticism of the workmen to whom she entrusted the manufacture of her machines.

They questioned her ability to superintend her own work, and it was only her persistency and remarkable competency that ultimately converted their incredulity into respect and admiration.

Since women have come into the possession of greater freedom than they formerly enjoyed, and have been afforded better opportunities of developing their inventive faculties, many of them have taken to invention as an occupation, and with marked success.

They find it the easiest and most congenial way of earning a livelihood, and not a few of them have been able thereby to accumulate comfortable fortunes, besides developing industries that have given employment to thousands of both sexes.

Thus the straw industry in the United States is due to Miss Betsy Metcalf, who, more than a century ago, produced the first straw bonnet ever manufactured in this country.

Since then the industry which this woman originated has assumed immense proportions.

The number of straw hats now made in Massachusetts alone, not to speak of those annually manufactured elsewhere, runs into the millions.

Scarcely less wonderful is the industry developed by Miss Knight, already mentioned, through her marvelous invention for manufacturing satchel-bottom paper bags.

Many men had previously essayed to solve the problem which she attacked with such signal success, but all to no purpose.

So valuable was her invention considered by experts that she refused fifty thousand dollars for it shortly after taking out her patent.

Often what are apparently the most trivial inventions prove the most lucrative.

Thus, a Chicago woman receives a handsome income for her invention of a paper pail.

A woman in San Francisco invented a baby carriage, and received fourteen thousand dollars for her patent.

The gimlet-pointed screw, which was the idea of a little girl, has realized to its patentee an independent fortune.

Still more remarkable is the Burden horseshoe machine, the invention of a woman, which turns out a complete horseshoe every three seconds and which is said to have effected a saving to the public of tens of millions of dollars.

The cotton gin, one of the most useful and important of American inventions--a machine that effected a complete revolution in the cotton industry throughout the world--is due to a woman, Catherine L. Greene, the wife of General Nathaniel Greene, of Revolutionary fame.

After she had fully developed in her own mind a method for separating the cotton from its seed, which was after her husband's death, she intrusted the making of the machine to Eli Whitney, who was then boarding with her, and who had a Yankee's skill in the use of tools.

Whitney was several times on the point of abandoning as impossible the task which had been assigned to him, but Mrs. Greene's faith in ultimate success never wavered, and, thanks to her persistence in the work and the putting into execution of her ideas, her great undertaking was finally crowned with success.

She did not apply for a patent for her invention in her own name, because so opposed was public opinion to woman's having part in mechanical occupation that she would have exposed herself to general ridicule and to a loss of position in society.

The consequence was that Whitney--her employee--got credit for an invention which, in reality, belonged to her.

She was, however, subsequently able to retain a subordinate interest in it through her second husband, Mr. Miller.

This is only one of many instances in which patents, taken out in the name of some man, are really due to women.

The earliest development of the mower and reaper, as well as the clover cleaner, belongs to Mrs. A.

H.

Manning, of Plainfield, New Jersey.

The patent on the clover cleaner was issued in the name of her husband; but, as he failed to apply for a patent for the mower and reaper, his wife was, after his death, robbed of the fruit of her brain by a neighbor, whose name appears on the list of patentees of an invention which originated with Mrs. Manning.

A few years ago men of science awoke to the startling fact that the earth's supply of nitrates was being rapidly exhausted.

It was then realized that, unless some new store of this essential fertilizer could be found, it would soon be impossible to provide the food requisite for the world's teeming millions.

What was to be done?

Never was a more important problem presented to science for solution, and never did science more quickly and efficaciously respond.

It was soon recognized that the earth's atmosphere was the only available storehouse for the much-needed nitrogen.

Forthwith scientists and inventors the world over proceeded to tap this source of supply and to convert its vast stores of nitrogen into the nitrates which are so indispensable to vegetable life.

To form some idea of the importance of the problem and the urgency of its solution, it may be stated that the amount of fertilizer required for the cotton crop alone in the Southern States in 1911 was no less than three million tons.

What, then, must have been the total amount used through the world for cereals and other crops that need constant fertilizing?

The famous nitrate deposits of Chili could supply only a small fraction of the stupendous amount required, and they, according to recent calculations, cannot continue to meet the present demands on them for more than a hundred years longer, at most.

The process involved, when once conceived, was simple enough, for it merely required the conversion of the nitrogen of the air into nitric acid, which in turn was employed in the production of nitrate of lime.

But, simple as it was, mankind had to wait a long time for its origination, and action was taken only when necessity compelled.

At present there are numerous nitrate factories in France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway and the United States, and the output is already enormous and constantly increasing.

Electricity, that mysterious force which has so frequently come to man's assistance during the last few decades, is the agent employed.

But who was the originator of the idea of utilizing the atmosphere for the production of nitrates?

Who took out the first patent for a process for making nitrates by using the nitrogen of the air?

It was a Frenchwoman--Mme.

Lefebre, of Paris--long since forgotten.

As early as 1859 she obtained a patent in England for her invention, but, as the need of fertilizers was not so urgent then as it is now, it was allowed to drop into oblivion, and the matter was not again taken up until a half-century later, when others secured the credit for an idea which was first conceived by a woman who happened to have the misfortune to live fifty years in advance of her time.

It were easy to extend the list of important inventions due to women and of patents which were issued in the name of their husbands or other men;

to tell of inventions, too, of whose fruits, because they happened to be helpless or inexperienced women, the real patentees were often robbed;

but the foregoing instances are quite sufficient to show what woman's keen inventive genius is capable of achieving in spite of all the restrictions put on her sex, and in spite of her lack of training in the mechanic arts.

Had women, since the organization of our Patent Office, enjoyed all the educational opportunities possessed by men; had they received the same encouragement as the lordly sex to develop their inventive faculties;

had the laws of the country accorded them the rewards to which their labor and genius entitled them, they would now have far more inventions to their credit than those indicated in our government reports; and they would, furthermore, be able to point to far more brilliant achievements than have heretofore, under the unfavorable conditions under which they were obliged to work, been possible.

But when we recall all the obstacles they have had to overcome and remember also the fact that most of the patents referred to in the preceding pages have been secured by women living in the United States--little being said of the modern inventions of women in foreign countries--we can see that their record is indeed a splendid one, that their achievements are not only worthy of all praise, but also a happy augury for the future.

When they shall have the same freedom of action as men in all departments of activity in which they exhibit special aptitude, when they shall have the same advantages of training and equipment and the prospect of the same emoluments as the sterner sex for the products of their brainwork and craftsmanship, then may we expect them to achieve the same distinction in the mechanic arts as has rewarded their efforts in science and literature; and then, too, may we hope to see them once more regain something of that supremacy in invention which was theirs in the early history of our race.

FOOTNOTES:

[227] "On a vu des femmes tres savantes, comme en fut des guerrieres, mais il n'y en eut jamais d'inventrices."

_Dictionnaire Philosophique, sub voce Femmes.

_ Condorcet, in commenting on this statement, remarks that "if men capable of invention were alone to have a place in the world, there would be many a vacant one, even in the academies."

[228] That marvelous structure known as the Taj Mahal--India's noblest tribute to the grace and goodness of Indian womanhood--is sometimes said to be a monument to the memory of Nur Mahal.

This is not the case.

This matchless gem of architecture-- " ...

The proud passion of an emperor's love Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars With body of beauty shrining soul and thought."

is a monument to Nur Mahal's niece and successor as empress, Mumtaz-Mahal--The Crown of the Palace--who, like her aunt, was a woman of rare beauty and talent and endeared herself to her people by her splendid qualities of mind and heart.

[229] The inventor of canals as well as of bridges over rivers and causeways over morasses was, according to Greek historians, the famous Assyrian queen, Semiramis, the builder of Babylon with its wonderful hanging gardens.

[230] Among the works which treat of the subject-matter of the foregoing pages the reader may consult with profit, _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture_, by O. T.

Mason, London, 1895; _Man and Woman_, the introductory chapter, by Havelock Ellis, London, 1898; and _Histoire Nouvelle des Arts et des Sciences_, by A. Renaud, Paris, 1878. [231] Cf.

_Women Inventors to whom patents have been granted by the United States Government, Compiled under the Direction of the Commissioner of Patents_, Washington, 1888. See also subsequent reports of the Patent Office.

[232] To one woman, Mary E. Poupard, of London, England, were granted in a single year no less than three patents for horse-shoes--two of the patents being for sectional and segmental horse-shoes.

CHAPTER XI