Ingenious Inventors

"I'm not surprised at what I've done. I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy..." -Margaret Knight.

Until recently so few females were given credit for their innovation and ingenuity, so I thought I would highlight a few female inventors. It does make one wonder what could have been invented had these women been given the same opportunities that men were given.


Margaret Knight invented the square bottomed grocery bag, among other things. Margaret Knight was born in 1838. She is credited with her first invention, a device for textile machines that would stop the machines if anything got caught in them, when she was twelve years old. She received her first patent when she was thirty-two when she came up with an attachment for a bag folding machine that made square bottoms. Knight was awarded twenty-seven patents. Some inventions were household items; a window frame, a clasp for holding robes. Other inventions were completely out of the scope of most women. In 1902 she received a patent on a rotary engine and even invented several motor components. Margaret Knight died in 1914 at the age of seventy- six.

Mary the Jewess invited the first distillation device. Not much is known about Mary. We know she was an alchemist and she probably originated in Alexandria in northern Egypt some time in the first century A.D. Mary's discovery of distillation came about as a by-product of her experiments to turn base metal into gold. She built a device that would heat various materials, blend their vapors and then trap the cooled mixture in another tube or bottle. The Greeks called it a tribikos. So next time you are drinking your ice cold beer or your sour appletini give a little cheer for Mary the Jewess.

Mary Pennington developed refrigeration. Imagine where we would be today without our handy refrigerators keeping our food fresh for us. Pennington was the daughter of a Quaker and lived in Philadelphia. She attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1890 but was refused her bachelor of science degree on the grounds that she was a woman. She continued her graduate studies and the University finally granted her PhD in 1895. She became a bacteriologist and her studies on milk were the first studies done on preserving perishable foods in cold storage. In 1907 she passed her Civil Service exam and began working for the USDA. Her new methods for processing, shipping and storing food were revolutionary. She set the standards which governed the food industry for more than twenty five years. Pennington was the first woman in the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers and the first to be inducted into the Poultry Historical Society's Hall of Fame (yes, it is a real thing). She was eighty years old when she died.

So many remarkable women with so many life changing inventions. Oh where could society be now if our female ancestors had not been held back by "being a woman"?


http://www.women-inventors.com/