If you missed our Part 1... click HERE
#6 Margaret Knight: The "Queen" of Paper Bags
Before the paper bag, the 1st version was shaped like an envelope, with
no flat bottom. How were you supposed to fit your sandwich into that?
Knight solved this by creating a machine to cut, fold, and glue square
bottoms to paper bags!
She gained a patent for it in
1871, but not without a lawsuit against a fellow who stole her idea. His
defense was "a woman could never design such an innovative machine,"
but she had the drawings to prove the invention was in fact hers and she
won the case.
Knight's career with inventions started at age
12, when she developed a stop-motion device that immediately brought
industrial machines to a halt if something was caught in them. Over the
course of her lifetime, she was awarded over 26 patents.
#7 Tabitha Babbitt: The Circular Saw
In the early 1800s, two men were required to work a lumber saw by pulling and pushing, back and forth. But thanks to a woman, the process became much simpler. In 1813, Tabitha Babbitt created the circular saw!
Babbitt's
saw was circular so that the teeth would continue cutting, unlike the
straight saws that only cut on the pull, and not the push motion. We
also commonly use her other building innovations, like machine-cut nails
instead of individually hand-crafted nails.
As a Massachusetts Shaker community member, she helped create tool innovations for furniture making. It's said that while she lived a simple Shaker life, Babbitt never applied for patents.
As a Massachusetts Shaker community member, she helped create tool innovations for furniture making. It's said that while she lived a simple Shaker life, Babbitt never applied for patents.
#8 Stephanie Kwolek: Bullet Proof Vests
Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar, a tough durable material now used to make bulletproof vests. For years she'd worked on the process at DuPont and in 1963, she got the polymers or rod-like molecules in fibers to line up in one direction.
This made the material stronger than
others, where molecules were arranged in bundles. In fact, the new
material was as strong as steel! Kwolek's technology also went on to be
used for making suspension bridge cables, helmets, brake pads, skis,
and camping gear.
#9 Rachel Zimmerman: The Blissymbol Printer
What is the Blissymbol Printer? It's a software program invented by a Canadian 12-year-old in the mid-1980s. Zimmerman's printer enables those with severe physical disabilities like cerebral palsy, to communicate.
The
user records their thoughts by touching symbols on a page or board
through the use of a special touch pad, the printer then translates the
symbols into a written language.
Zimmerman's system started as a project for a school science fair, but ended up competing and winning a silver medal in a nationwide contest, as well as gaining her the YTV Television Youth Achievement Award.
Zimmerman's system started as a project for a school science fair, but ended up competing and winning a silver medal in a nationwide contest, as well as gaining her the YTV Television Youth Achievement Award.
#10 Bette Nesmith Graham: Liquid Paper
The inventor of "Liquid Paper" or as we may know it, "White-Out" was Betty Nesmith Graham.
Graham got an idea she'd seen done by sign painters, which was to add another layer of paint to cover-up mistakes. She used a kitchen blender to mix-up her first batch of substance to cover-up over mistakes made on paper at work. After much experimenting and then being fired for spending so much time distributing her product as a trial, she received a patent in 1958. Wow!
Graham got an idea she'd seen done by sign painters, which was to add another layer of paint to cover-up mistakes. She used a kitchen blender to mix-up her first batch of substance to cover-up over mistakes made on paper at work. After much experimenting and then being fired for spending so much time distributing her product as a trial, she received a patent in 1958. Wow!
More to come folks... stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment