Women Who've Invented Things

1. Josephine Cochran invented Dishwasher. Cochran set out to design a washing device after commonly finding plateware chipped from hand washing. She designed a set of wire compartments, each created to fit plates, cups, or saucers. The machine was showcased in the World Columbian Exposition of 1893, helping to establish a market for the dishwasher in hotels and large restaurants.

2. Letitia Geer invented medical syringe. On February 12, 1896 Letitia Mumford Geer, a native New Yorker, filed for a patent for a new design for the medical syringe. The patent for the one-handed syringe design was granted in 1899. Her newly-patent design helped revolutionize health care, making it easier for health care workers and for patients. Her syringe design includes a cylinder, piston rod, a handle and nozzle. The piston rod had a U-shaped handle for easier grip. The handle was designed in a way to be reached even in extreme positions. The hook at the free end of the syringe prevented hands from slipping. Geer’s design of the medical syringe had many unique advantages. The syringe is very simple and cheap. It can be operated with one hand. The syringe can be used for rectal injections and similar purposes and it can be operated by either the physician or the patient. In fact, today’s modern syringes are inspired from Geer’s original idea.

3. Evelyn Berezin. Evelyn Berezin was an expert in logic design and data transmission. She designed one of the earliest computer reservations systems for airlines and founded a company that developed the first computerized standalone word processor for business use. In 1969, Berezin and three colleagues founded Redactron, where they developed the first computerized word processor. One of the earliest commercial products to contain a microprocessor, the Data Secretary debuted in 1971 and boasted advanced features including the ability to record and play back what users had typed, so it could be edited or reprinted. Users also could delete or cut and paste text. By 1974, Redactron’s total revenue was $16.2 million. Redactron was sold to the Burroughs Corp. in 1976, and Berezin served as president of its Redactron Division until 1980.

4. Marie Curie, née Maria Salomea Skłodowska, (born November 7, 1867, Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire—died July 4, 1934, near Sallanches, France), Polish-born French physicist, famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. Indefatigable despite a career of physically demanding and ultimately fatal work, she discovered polonium and radium, championed the use of radiation in medicine and fundamentally changed our understanding of radioactivity.

5. Maria Beasley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she pursued her life’s work. One of Beasley’s inventions that surely impacted her own life and others was her barrel making machine, which was patented in 1878 as her first patented invention. Her barrel making machine earned her “an unprecedented payday of over $20,000 a year,” which would translate to well over $450,000 today. Newspapers of her time noted her accomplishments. In 1889, the Evening Star, a newspaper in Washington, DC, said Beasley “made a small fortune out of the machine.” In 1901, another paper in Arkansas—the Arkansas Democrat—mentioned that the machine was rolling out 1,500 barrels per day. Also, Beasley’s design for the life raft was patented in 1882, and patents like hers and others would save uncountable lives in the coming years.