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All were invented by women.
In
last week's column, we looked at
some of the similarities and differences between male and female
inventors. In this article, we take a look at the above three
inventions that have had a major impact on society. In addition,
here are a few other well-known products that were created by female
inventors and will be featured in future columns:
By the way, how many of the inventors
of the above products can you name?
Windshield wipers
Some inventions are created as the
result of a person simply trying to solve a problem. That's what
Mary Anderson of Alabama did in 1903 when she invented windshield
wipers. On a trip to New York City, while touring the city on a
streetcar, she noticed that the motorman had to continually get out
to wipe the snow and ice from the windshield. The man had tried a
variety of solutions to this problem but nothing had worked.
After making a quick drawing in her
sketchbook, Mary came up with a solution to the problem. Her
solution, which would be patented a year later, allowed the motorman
to sweep the snow and ice away with a device that was operated from
inside the car. This became the forerunner to the modern windshield
wiper. Even though wipers had become standard equipment on American
cars by 1913, Mary never profited from them.
The USS Hopper
Grace Murray Hopper developed COBOL
(which stands for COmmon Business Oriented Language) in 1959 while
she was in the Navy, and she was also the Navy's first female
admiral. COBOL was more like natural English than any previous
computer language. It was the first programming language mandated by
the Department of Defense for its applications and, in recognition
of her contributions, the Navy named one of their destroyers in her
honor, the USS Hopper.
COBOL served as a foundation for later
computer languages, and it's likely that we wouldn't have the World
Wide Web today if it weren't for COBOL.
Another contribution that Grace Hopper
made was the term "computer bug." No, she didn't invent it, but she
is the one who coined the term. She did this when a computer
processor had stopped working due to a moth that was stuck in it.
[to top of second column in
this article]
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Scotchgard
Some new products are the result of an
accident. Penicillin, Post-It notes, Silly Putty and Ivory soap are
all examples of accidental discoveries. You can put Scotchgard in
this category too.
Patsy Sherman created Scotchgard in
1952 while working as a chemist for 3M in Minneapolis. Sherman's
team had been trying to develop a new kind of rubber for use in
aircraft fuel lines, when an assistant in her chemistry lab
accidentally dropped a beaker full of a liquid rubber mixture, which
splashed onto Sherman's white canvas sneakers.
When they tried to wash it off, the
water and solvents beaded up and ran off the sneakers. Sherman and
fellow chemist Sam Smith realized that the mixture could be used to
protect fabrics from water and other fluids. After three years of
work, the mixture was patented and released as Scotchgard Protector™
in 1956.
In a 1997 speech to students, Sherman
explained that being an inventor does not require a lot of money or
education, nor is it a matter of age or gender. She once remarked,
"How many great discoveries would never have occurred were it not
for accidents?"
At this point, what have we learned
about the abilities of women inventors?
Is it that women would achieve MORE
success than their male counterparts if they had the same
opportunities as men? Or LESS success? Or are women and men equal as
inventors?
The answer to that question is as tough
to figure out as removing red wine from a couch that wasn't
protected by Patsy Sherman's invention.
We'll discuss additional inventions
created by other women in future articles. In the meantime, if you'd
like to weigh in, send your comments to me at
niemann7@aol.com, and
I'll include some of the better ones in an upcoming column. See ya
next week!
Next week:
Invention Mysteries pop quiz
[Paul
Niemann]
Sources: InventorsMuseum.com, the
Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation,
3M
website
Paul Niemann is a contributing author to Inventors' Digest
magazine, and he also runs MarketLaunchers.com, helping people in
the marketing of their new product ideas. He can be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Last week's
column in LDN:
"Necessity
is NOT always the mother of invention"
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