Women’s Day 2021: Remembering women inventors

Ironing board

Inventor: Sarah Boone (1892)

Before African-American Sarah Boone, a seamstress and dressmaker, improved upon the existing not-so-handy ironing table, women either used the dining table or wooden planks to iron garments (in the 9th century, the Vikings used whale bones). Though several individuals held patents for folding ironing tables, Boone’s version is the forerunner of the ironing board that we use today - the one with narrow double-sided arm ideal for ironing sleeves and bodies of women’s garments. On April 26, 1892, Boone received the patent for the ironing board.

Windshield wiper

Inventor: Mary Anderson (1903)

Mary Anderson, an Alabama native, did not know driving. But one day while using the streetcar in New York City she was appalled by the sight of drivers jumping off their vehicles to clean snow off the windshields. Those frequent ‘jumping offs’ caused delays and caught in a streetcar snarl, Anderson thought of an automatic blade that could clean the windshield. Back home, she sketched a wiper that could be operated by a handle inside the vestibule of the motor car. She filed for a patent on June 18, 1903 and on November 10, 1903, the United States Patent Office awarded Anderson patent number 743,801 for her Window Cleaning Device.

The First Monopoly Game

Inventor: Elizabeth Magie (1904)

What we now know of as Monopoly was originally designed by Elizabeth Magie, an anti-monopolist, to demonstrate the evils of unchecked capitalism. Called The Landlord's Game, the game borrowed heavily from Henry George’s single-tax theory. Magie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents. It was patented in 1904. Nearly three decades later, Charles Darrow filed patent for a game called Monopoly which borrowed heavily for Magie’s The Landlord's Game.

Coffee filter

Inventor: Melitta Bentz (1908)

Melitta Bentz, a housewife living in Dresden (Germany), hated the chore of cleaning coffee grounds from the brass pot in which she made the morning culpa for her husband. The Bentzs could not afford to buy the cloth coffee filters prevalent in those days. One day, a tired Bentz put blotting paper over a coffee mug, added the coffee grounds and then poured hot water over it. Lo! The easy, cheap, disposable coffee filter was born. On July 8, 1908, the Bentzs patented the paper coffee filter as ‘Filter Top Device lined with Filter Paper’. Soon, they started a company with an investment of only 72 Reichsmark cents (about $30) which is now a billion-dollar company.

Central heating

Inventor: Alice Parker (1919)

Alice Parker is often known as the Mother of Modern Heating. There’s enough reason to thank the American for the ‘central warmth’ in most homes. Up until 1919, firewood was used to heat homes but Parker invented a furnace, a first of its kind, to use natural gas for heating. Her design included multiple burner system and had air ducts to distribute heat throughout the house. On December 23, 1919, Parker was granted U.S. Patent No. US132590A. Though Parker’s design was never implemented due to safety issues but to Parker goes the credit of designing the precursor of the modern heating system.

Foot pedal trash can

Inventor: Lillian Gilbreth

Born in Oakland (California) Lillian Moller Gilbreth, was an industrial psychologist, engineer, and mother of 12. Gilbreth was always tweaking gadgets to make them better - she added shelves inside refrigerator doors including the egg keeper and butter tray, and improved upon the existing can opener. But she is most known for her invention of the foot pedal trash can.

Disposable diaper

Inventor: Marion Donovan (1950)

Leaking babies can be messy. For eons, cloth nappies have been in use but babies still leaked. In 1948 Marion Donovan created Boater, a non-leaking diaper cover from her shower curtain. The diaper cover made from army surplus nylon parachute was first sold at Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store in New York City. A year later she received a patent for waterproof diapers. Donovan sold the design of waterproof diaper for $1 million.

Liquid Paper

Inventor: Bette Nesmith Graham (1951)

This is the story of a secretary who turned into a millionaire with one idea of liquid paper. In 1951 Bette Nesmith Graham was working as executive secretary of the Chairman of the Texas Bank Board. Graham, as the story goes, was not a brilliant typist and every time she tried to cover her typing errors she’d leave a messy mark on the paper. One day, she mixed some white, water-based tempera paint at home in her kitchen blender, packed it in a vial and used it to paint over her typing mistakes. It worked. That typewriter-correction fluid called Mistake Out was an instant hit. After further experimentation, she perfected the whitening recipe and Liquid Paper was born.

Bullet-proof fibre

Inventor: Stephanie Kwolek (1966)

Stephanie Kwolek worked as a chemist in DuPont’s office in Delaware and was experimenting with strong but lightweight material to replace steel bracing in car tyres. It was in search of that plastic material that Kwolek invented the stronger-than-steel fibre in 1965. Called Kevlar, the material was initially meant for use in automobile tyres but soon became the material of choice for bullet-proof vests and body armour. Kevlar is described as a plastic five times stronger than steel on an equal weight basis and strong enough to stop bullets and knives. The fibre is now also used in a variety of other products, including aeroplanes, mobile phones, sailboats, bridge cables, canoes, and frying pans.

Caller ID and call-waiting

Inventor: Shirley Ann Jackson (1970s)

Shirley Ann Jackson, an American physicist, was the first African-American woman to have earned a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the second African-American woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in physics. While working at AT&T Bell Labs, she invented the system of Call Waiting and Caller ID that we all use in our everyday lives.

History of International Women’s Day

It all began on February 28, 1909, when 15,000 women walked the streets of New York City demanding better pay, shorter working hours and the right to vote. A year later, at the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, a woman named Clara Zetkin suggested the idea of a National Women’s Day. Nearly 100 women from 17 countries who were attending the conference agreed unanimously. But there was no definite date yet for a Women’s Day.

In 1917, women in Soviet Russia took to the streets seeking suffrage. The date the strike commenced was February 23. Russia, then, was following the Julian calendar, which meant that February 23 was March 8 on the Gregorian calendar. That is how the date was fixed. After suffrage victory in Russia, the day was mainly celebrated in socialist and communist countries until the feminist movement picked on the idea and the date. In 1977, the United Nations began celebrating March 8 as International Women’s day.