Female Inventors They Don’t Teach You About in School
Most of us learned about Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell in history class. But ask the average person who Mary Sherman Morgan or Patricia Bath is, and you’ll likely get a confused facial expression. Despite getting far less recognition than their male counterparts, these women tackled real-world problems and came up with solutions that reshaped everyday life.
Stephanie Kwolek
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At DuPont in 1964, Stephanie Kwolek was experimenting with polymers to improve car tires when her solution turned cloudy and thin. Colleagues thought she’d ruined the batch, but Stephanie tested it anyway. Those fibers turned out five times stronger than steel. That discovery would become Kevlar, now used in bulletproof vests that have saved countless lives. Law enforcement and firefighters use it because Stephanie trusted her instincts when most saw failure.
Mary Sherman Morgan
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Among 900 engineers at North American Aviation’s Rocketdyne Division in the 1950s, only one was a woman. Mary Sherman Morgan didn’t even have a college degree, yet she became technical lead on America’s most urgent project. Mary invented Hydyne, the propellant that launched Explorer 1 into orbit in 1958. Ironically, her son spent his childhood launching homemade rockets in the Arizona desert, oblivious to her work until her death.
Marie Van Brittan Brown
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Police response times were painfully slow in Marie Van Brittan Brown’s Queens neighborhood, and crime was on the rise. In 1966, Marie and her husband, Albert, built a system with peepholes and a movable camera that wirelessly connected to a bedroom monitor. A two-way microphone allowed conversation, and buttons could trigger an alarm or unlock the door remotely. Every doorbell camera today somehow drew inspiration from her innovation.
Jeanne L. Crews
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NASA hired Jeanne L. Crews as an engineer in 1964 when few women worked there. The agency was struggling with the problem of spacecraft that couldn’t withstand impacts from even tiny meteorites or debris. Jeanne experimented with Nextel, a ceramic fabric, and created a multi-layered shield strong enough to stop most space debris by diffusing energy through its layers. Decades later, astronauts travel more safely because of her.
Patricia Bath
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Patricia Bath noticed a pattern that many others overlooked. She saw that blindness rates were significantly higher in underserved communities and decided to address them directly. In 1981, she invented the Laserphaco Probe and became the first African American woman physician to receive a medical patent. The device uses a precise laser to break up cataracts in minutes, then gently removes the debris so a new lens can be inserted. What had once been a complex, lengthy procedure became faster and far more accessible, and her method is now used worldwide.
Jeanne Villepreux-Power
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People believed the paper nautilus stole its shell from other organisms. Jeanne Villepreux-Power, a French naturalist living in Sicily, invented the first glass aquarium. After observing the nautilus, she confirmed it grew its own shell. Then she designed two more aquarium variants for studying creatures at different ocean depths. From the 1830s, her groundbreaking work earned her membership in over a dozen European scientific academies.
Hedy Lamarr
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Hollywood knew Hedy Lamarr as a glamorous actress. What they didn’t know was that she spent evenings inventing technology that would power GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. She wanted to help during World War II and teamed up with composer George Antheil to develop “frequency hopping” to encrypt torpedo control signals and prevent enemy jamming. The Navy used the technology during a 1962 blockade of Cuba.
Margaret E. Knight
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The flat-bottom paper bags handed out at grocery stores trace back to Margaret E. Knight’s determination to protect her work. At 30, she designed a machine that could cut, fold, and glue paper into sturdy square-bottom bags that stood upright. When a man tried to patent her invention after seeing the design, she took him to court and proved the idea was hers by showing her detailed models and sketches. She won the patent and went on to design more than 100 machines over her lifetime, securing 20 patents along the way.
Maria Beasley
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Maria Beasley earned $20,000 annually with her barrel-making machine in an era when most women made around $3 daily. She successfully marketed at least 15 inventions, including her life raft, which saved countless lives at sea. Emergency rafts at the time were mostly wooden planks with hollow floats and no guardrails. Maria created a raft that folded for storage but unfolded quickly in emergencies and included protective rails.
Marion Donovan
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Hours washing soaked bedsheets and baby clothes were Marion Donovan’s reality as a new mother in the 1940s. Cloth diapers didn’t have covers back then. She grabbed a shower curtain and sewed a waterproof cover that prevented leaks. Manufacturers rejected her idea, but she hired a company to produce the covers and sold them through “Saks Fifth Avenue.” Two years later, “Keko Corporation” bought her patents for $1 million.