1. Windshield Wiper (1913): During a visit to New York City in 1902, Alabama-resident Mary Elizabeth Anderson noticed that the trolley driver struggled to keep the windshield clear of the falling snow. Once home, she invented a hand-operated device to keep the windshield clear. Called the Window Cleaning Device, Andersen got a 17-year patent for her invention on November 10, 1903.
2. Disposable Diaper (1951): Mary Donovan created the diaper out of a shower curtain. She cut the curtain into pieces and sewed it into a waterproof diaper cover with snaps instead of safety pins. The prolific inventor with 20 patents to her name called the diaper ‘Boater’.
3. Ice-cream Maker (1843): Even before freezers were invented, Nancy Johnson created a manual device to make ice creams – an outer pail that contained crushed ice and an inner pail that had the ice cream mix that needed to be frozen. Johnson got a patent for the hand-cranked device but she sold the design real cheap.
4. Central Heating (1919): Alice Parker, an African-American inventor, patented the first central heating system, which offered an easy way for people to regulate the temperature throughout their homes more efficiently. Her design allowed cool air to be drawn into the furnace, then conveyed through a heat exchanger that delivered warm air through ducts to individual rooms of the house.
5. Coffee Filter (1908): Melitta Bentz, a German mother of three, first used a perforated brass cup to filter coffee and then experimented with blotting paper from her son’s exercise book. She created the paper coffee filter, patented it, formed a company named Melitta and hired her husband and two sons as the first employees. Her creation was a huge commercial success.
6. Aquarium (1832): Jeanne Villepreux-Power, a French naturalist, was experimenting with how the paper nautilus does not take discarded shells from other organisms, but rather grows its own shell. For the experiment, she invented a glass aquarium so that she could observe the creature for several days/months.
7. Bullet-proof Fabric (1966): DuPont was searching for strong but lightweight plastics to use in car tires. It was then that the company’s researcher Stephanie Kwolek discovered a bullet-proof fabric that became known as Kevlar and is still widely used in bullet-proof vests, bridge cables, canoes, and frying pans.
8. Anti-shark Repellent (1943): Before becoming a famous chef and after being thrown out of an advertising firm, Julia Child volunteered as a research assistant for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a government intelligence agency that would later become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During her time at the OSS, Child (nee McWilliams) helped develop a potion to repel sharks, to keep them away from downed pilots and underwater explosives.
9. Dishwasher (1886): Though Joel Houghton was the first one to get a patent for a dishwasher invention, it was Chicago-based Josephine Cochrane who first created a machine that used water pressure instead of scrubbers to clean dishes. For her invention of the dishwasher, Cochrane was inducted in the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.
10. Globe (1875): While working as a governess, Massachusetts-native Ellen Eliza Fitz created a new globe mounting technique that would facilitate students’ understanding of the Earth’s daily rotation and annual revolution. In 1875, she was granted a patent for her invention. Fitz’s globe was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and in 1882 she was awarded a second patent for mounting globes that indicated the positions of stars above the horizon at any time of the year.
11. Alphabet Blocks (1882): Different forms of alphabet blocks had been in existence but the blocks as we know them were invented by Massachusetts-based writer and mother of four, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney. The first blocks were made of wood and she was awarded a patent in 1882. Alphabet blocks became so popular that they were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2003.
12. Life Raft (1882): Maria Beasley was an ‘engineering dynamo’ of her time – between 1870s and 1890s, she secured 15 patents for her inventions, including the life raft that has since saved so many lives. For her first invention, the barrel-making machine, Beasley secured an unprecedented payday of $20,000 a year. That was in 1878!
13. Fire Escape (1887): In 1887, when multi-storey living was becoming popular in crowded cities, Anna Connelly patented the exterior fire escape – a fire escape bridge surrounded by railings that allowed for safe escape from one building to the next in the event there was a fire.
14. Car Heater (1893): Margaret A. Wilcox created the first car heater that allowed direct air from over the engines to warm the feet of 19th century motorists. It took a long time for the idea to catch on – not until Henry Ford started installing her system in Ford's 1929 Model A cars.
15. Retractable Dog Leash (1908): All dog lovers thank New Yorker Mary A. Delaney for inventing the retractable dog leash. Called simply a “leading device,” the invention promised “certain new and useful improvements,” such as a drum and spring allowing the chain to be rolled out in stages. The leash patent, interestingly, states that “the invention is particularly designed for ladies … to take the place of the present inconvenient leading device or leash.”
16. Foot Pedal Trash Can (early 1900s): An engineer and psychologist, Lillian Gilbreth had too many inventions up her sleeve. In the early 1900s, she designed the shelves inside refrigerator doors, made the can opener easier to use, and tidied up cleaning with a foot pedal trash can.
17. Ironing Board (1892): Before Sarah Boone invented the modern-day ironing board, patents for folding ironing boards existed. However, Boone’s design had a narrow, double-sided arm that made it perfect for ironing sleeves without forming creases which soon became hugely popular.
18. Caller id and Call waiting (1970s): Award-winning theoretical physicist Shirley Ann Jackson contributed numerous technologies to the field of telecommunications including caller ID and call-waiting, as well as solar cells and fibre optic cables.
19. Word Processor (1971): Evelyn Berezin not only created the first computerized airline booking system, she is also credited with creation of the world's first word processor. She founded her own company, Redactron, to get her inventions on the market.
20. Computer Algorithm (1843): Ada Lovelace is credited with writing the world's first computer algorithm while translating the notes of her mathematics professor Charles Babbage for his theoretical invention (the analytical engine). Lovelace added her own notes, tripling the original text, and thus writing the world's first computer algorithm.
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