Big ideas by women
Necessity, the sages said, is the mother of
invention. Twist it. What if I tell you that the mother found a necessity and
took to invention. So, a mother is the mother of invention. No, I am not
word-twerking. Women have been big inventors.Here, I am not talking of Madame
Curie, the discoverer of radium, who became the first female Nobel Prize winner
in 1903. Or, of Nobel Laureate Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgin, who discovered the
structures of Vitamin B12, Nor of Gertrude Eliot, the only woman inventor
inducted into The Inventors Hall of Fame.She invented the leukemia-fighting
drug 6-mercapto.Here, I am talking about how women changed everyone's every
day. Women invented everyday things.The windshield wiper. The square-bottom
paper bag. Disposable diaper. Foot-pedal trash can. Dishwasher. Scotchguard.
Liquid paper. Retractable dog leash.Kevlar. Monopoly. I bet, you did not know
this. All these everyday things have been invented by women.
DISPOSABLE DIAPERS
The baby leaks. Babies leak till they are potty
trained. Changing cotton nappies can drive any mother insane (imagine, the day
when the baby has diarrhoea). Marion Donovan snipped a shower curtain to make
the waterproof diaper cover. It was in 1951 that Donovan sold the first Boater
diaper at Saks Fifth Avenue, New York, and later the patent for $1million.
Pampers was born in 1961. Babies still leak but nappy-changing no longer drives
moms crazy.
SQUARE-BOTTOM PAPER BAGS
When you go shopping and bring that bunch of
asparagus and bottles of shampoo in a paper bag, did you notice its square
bottom? In the beginning paper bags were like envelopes and were daft as bags.
Until, cotton mill worker Margaret Knight invented a machine that could cut and
glue square bottoms to a paper bag. That divided weight across the base and
shopping changed forever.
LIQUID WHITENER
Much before there was the Delete key on the PC,
secretarys would clank the typewriter keys and write long letters. And they made
their mistakes. Typos. Secretary Bette Nesmith Graham was smart. She secretly
used white tempera paint to cover up her typing errors. She spent hours in the
kitchen perfecting the formula and patented Liquid Paper in 1958.
Gillette bought her company in 1979 for $47.5
million! And that sure is no typo.
FOOT-PEDAL TRASH CAN
Lillian Gilbreth was smart. In the early 1900s
she invented the shelves inside a refrigerator. That was not the end of her
ingenuity. She tidied up cleaning when she invented a foot-pedal trash can.
Next time, while throwing the garbage in the pedal trash can say a mighty thank
you to Gilbreth.
WINDSHIELD WIPERS
Driving to work or on a first date and rain
plays spoilsport. It starts pouring. Not cats and dogs. But fat raindrops on
your car windshield. To beat the drops and drive on, you just turn the
windshield wiper on. Go back to 1903, Mary Anderson invented the windshield
wiper. But there weren't many takers. People thought it was safer to drive on
in snow and rain than pull a lever. Cadillac bought into the idea and became
the first company to include wipers in all car models.
SCOTCHGUARD
It happened in a lab. It was an accident. One
day 3M (or Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company as it was previously
called), chemist Patsy Sherman noticed that the fluorochemical rubber spilled
on a lab assistant's shoe wouldn't come off. But the stain repelled water, oil,
and other liquids without changing the colour of the shoe. Sherman and her
coinventor Samuel Smith called it Scotchguard.
THINKSTOCK RETRACTABLE DOG LEASH
Roufus is the big fat dog. So naughty during
walks that he pulls you along with his leash.A retractable dog leash keeps you
safe and gives a long rope to Roufus. New York City dogowner Mary A. Delaney
patented the first retractable leading device in 1908.
THE DISHWASHER
The party's over, the guests have gone home,
your eyelids are laden with sleep but it is the pile of dishes in the sink that
tanks your heart. Ah! The dirty dish-party hangover. You look at the dishwasher
and thank the modern contraption. Well, shed that modern bit in gratitude for
this woman. Josephine Cochrane, the dishwasher inventor, patented it in 1886.It
sure wasn't as sleek.Josephine's dishwasher combined high water pressure, a
wheel, a boiler and a wire rack.
OTHER INVENTIONS BY WOMEN
Circular saw: Tabitha Babbitt invented the
circular saw. The circular saw was hooked up to a water powered machine to
reduce the effort to cut lumber. She watched men use the difficult two-man
whipsaw and noticed that half their motion was wasted.The first circular saw
she made is in Albany, New York. She did not patent the circular saw so that it
could be used by others.
Monopoly: The history of Monopoly can be traced
back to 1903, when American Elizabeth (Lizzie) J Magie Phillips created a game
through which she hoped to be able to explain the single tax theory of Henry
PIC: CORBIS George. It was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the
negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies.
Kevlar: Stephanie Louise Kwolek, an American
chemist,is best known for inventing the first of a family of synthetic fibres
of exceptional strength and stiffness: poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide
-better known as Kevlar. She was amazed to find that the new fibre would not
break when nylon typically did. Not only was it stronger than nylon, Kevlar was
five times stronger than steel by weight.
Alphabet Blocks: Author Adeline DT Whitney
invented wooden blocks to help kids learn their ABCs. She patented it in 1882.
Apgar score: Virginia Apgar, an American
obstetrical anesthesiologist, invented the Apgar score in 1952 as a simple and
replicable method to quickly assess the health of newborn children immediately
after birth. .
Folding cabinet bed: Sarah Elizabeth Goode was
an inventor. Her invention came out of necessity with people living in small
homes.Goode invented a folding cabinet bed which provided people who lived in
small spaces to utilise their space efficiently. When the bed was folded up, it
looked like a desk. It had spaces for storage.
Submarine telescope and lamp: Sarah Mather's
Submarine Telescope is one of the earliest scientific instruments credited to a
female inventor.
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Preeti Verma Lal
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TL8MAR15
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