Famous Women Inventors
Do you know how many famous women inventors there are? When thinking about the wonders that have been invented over the years how often do you consider the large number of innovative things that have come from the imaginations of women? Though there are fewer of them, women inventors have greatly contributed to our comfort, our safety and our advancement.
Let us start with Giuliana Tesoro. She is said to be one of the most prolific scientists in her field of specialization not only in the United States but around the world. She holds over one hundred and twenty patents. Ms. Tesoro specialized in fabrics and textiles and has invented flame resistant fabrics as well as a way to eliminate static in synthetic materials.
Bette Nesmith Graham, mother of Monkee’s guitarist Michael Nesmith, worked as a secretary for many years during which time learning to use the new electric typewriters frustrated her. Each error meant retyping everything on the page she had been working on. This frustration made her one of the most famous women inventors of her time. She solved the problem of these mistakes by watching some painters who were decorating the windows of the bank she was working at. She noticed that when they made mistakes they did not remove the work they had done nor did they have to find some method to start over. They painted over the error and continued on. Experimenting at home she made a paint of her own from white water based tempera paint. Once she was sure it worked she tinted it to match the stationary of the bank and began to hand in corrected pages instead of retyping her errors. It was such a good match that her boss did not notice. Her coworkers asked for some to use and soon after Mistake Out was born. Shortly after she changed the name to Liquid Paper and opened a company to sell it.
Marion Donovan became a mother after the Second World War. She loved her babies but found the mess of changing cloth diapers, and all that leaked out of them, a job she did not enjoy. Wanting something better than the rubber pants that were used to cover diapers she invented a waterproof cover for cloth diapers. This cover used snaps to close it and so fit baby better, safer and with no subsequent diaper rash. Once this product was on the market she moved on to other baby needs. She eventually invented the disposable diaper by using a type of paper that could absorb the mess inside it while keeping baby dry. No one believed in this invention and it took her nearly ten years to convince a manufacturer that this product would be popular among mothers and comfortable for baby. It was first marketed as Pampers. Over her lifetime she had twenty patents for products for babies.
Famous women inventors did more than make useful products. There was Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. She was in the Navy as a programmer. Always innovative she loved to take things apart as a child to learn how they worked. After the war she became a senior programmer for a civilian company where she eventually invented a new computer business language. It was called COBOL, which stood for Common Business Oriented Language.
These famous women are but a few who have made serious contributions to society. Lillian Moller Gibreth was the inventor of the electric food mixer while Mary Phelps Jacob invented the first bra. Martha Coston was the inventor of the signal flares that are used by ships. Anna W. Keichline was the woman who invented the precursor to concrete block, but she also invented the compressed air radiator and the folding bed. Both Gertrude Belle Elion, who discovered anti-leukemia medications and Helen Free, who discovered the glucose test needed for diabetes detection, made major contributions to the medical field. While Stephanie Kwolek invented a new synthetic material that was later incorporated into what is now called Kevlar because of its strength.
