International Women's Day: Inventive Women

Women have been inventing solutions to the problems around them for as long as they have lived. Social and historical factors, however, meant that until recently relatively little of this was recorded. Scholars single out the 4th century Egyptian mathematician and natural philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria, as one of the first known women inventors. Hypatia is credited with the invention of several scientific instruments including the astrolabe for astronomical measurements, and a hydrometer to measure the specific gravity of liquids. On the occasion of International Women's Day, March 8, WIPO Magazine took a somewhat less scholarly look at inventive women.

Many such women figure in Deborah Jaffe's book, Ingenious Women: From Tincture of Saffron to Flying Machines. Her lively gallery of inventors and their inventions spans the whimsical to the awe-inspiring, beginning with the first British patent granted to a woman, Amye Everard, in 1637 for Mrs. Ball's Tincture of saffron and essence of roses.

For centuries the achievements of women inventors went largely unrecognized. Sarah Guppy of Bristol, U.K., is a case in point. In 1811 Miss Guppy patented a method "for Bridges and Railroads" based on sturdy piles or columns from which bridges could be suspended. But the history books do not record her name with those of the famous suspension bridge engineers who followed her lead ten years later. Tracing the women behind inventions is made more difficult by the fact that, until late into the 19th century, married women in the U.K. and the U.S. were legally barred from owning property - including intellectual property. If they filed patents at all, they did so in their husbands' names.

Fighting back

Others had to fight to protect their IP from marauders. In 1870, cotton mill worker Margaret Knight of Massachusetts, U.S., who invented a machine for making flat-bottomed paper bags, brought successful legal action against a man who copied her design and attempted to patent it as his own. He argued in court that a woman would simply not have been capable of designing the machine. Her bag design is still used today.

Protection of a different kind inspired one Louisa Llewellin in 1904 to patent her lady's "glove for self defence and other purposes." (The patent does not relate what other purposes she had in mind). Designed for the increasing numbers of women travelling alone by rail, the glove incorporated...