You can thank a woman....

[Lady Sidhe]

Liquid Paper--1951, Bette Nesmith, a secretary, invented this to paint over typing errors. She poured it into a fingernail polish bottle and kept it on her desk, and called it "Mistake Out." She tried marketing her invention with many companies, including IBM, who all turned her down, so she began making it at home, and traveling the country to sell her bottles.

Coffee Filters--1908, Melitta Bentz, a homemaker in Dresden, Germany, was frustrated by the traditional method of brewing coffee (wrapping loose grounds in a cloth bag and boiling water around it), so she tore a sheet of blotting paper from her son's schoolbook, cut it into a circular shape, and placed the porous paper in the bottom of a brass pot, which she had poked full of small holes. She poured the coffe grounds on top of this filter and poured boiling water over it. She and her husband Hugo hired a tinsmith to produce a new coffee pot for sale to the public, and in 1909, they brought the drip system to the Leipzig trade fair, selling the pots as "coffeemakers." Hello to the drip method of making coffee!

Windshield Wipers--1903, Mary Anderson made a quick drawing in her sketchbook that would permit a driver to operate a lever from inside the vehicle, activating a swinging arm, which mechanically wiped away ice and snow. She experimented until it worked to her satisfaction, and recieved a patent in 1904 for a windshield wiper. It caught on, and by 1913 was a standard piece of equipment on American cars.

Tract Housing--Kate Gleason, drawing on the model of automotive mass-production methods, utilized the concept for affordable housing construction at a time when all houses were custom-built.

Brown Paper bags--Margaret Knight, holder of 27 patents, is best remembered for inventing the machinery which made the flat-bottomed sack possible. Shortly after the civil war, she worked for the Columbia Paper Bag company in Mass.She recieved a patent in 1870, successfully defeating a man who had applied for the same patent (he'd stolen the idea and claimed that because she was a woman, she couldn't possibly have understood enough about mechanical complexities to create the machine--a court ruled against him).

Disposable Diapers--1950, Marian Donovan, a young mother who came from a family of inventors, took a piece of plastic shower curtain, cut it down to size, and lined it with inexpensive padding. She called it a "boater," because, like a boat, it was watertight. She approached several manufacturers, who all turned her down, so she began marketing them herself. They made her a wealthy woman, and she ended up selling the patent to Proctor and Gamble for more than a million dollars.

Chocolate Chip Cookies--1933, Ruth Wakefield, a restaurateur, owner of the Toll House Inn in Mass. She named the cookie the Toll House Cookie.


(From the 2005 Almanac--Sidhe)