Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The mother of invention

Ada Lovelace Day, bringing women in technology to the fore, was the the 24th of March. It was promoted & discussed amongst a number of technical types on the web at the time. Last weekend (April 18th) I came across the clipping below taken from a local newspaper in 2004. It gives a synopsis of a book published at the time.

Author: Jaffe, Deborah

Ingenious women : from tincture of saffron to flying machines / foreword by Sandi Toksvig, 2004.

The first woman to receive a patent was in 1637 in England between that and 1914 the were 500 patents granted to women. In the article the author of the article mentions a few women that Deborah Jaffe describes in her book. For more details click on the name.

Josephine Cochran - dish washer

Marion Donavan- disposable nappy

Ada Lovelace- first computer programme

Gusta Aarons Bohannan- chain link fire escape

Mary Anderson - windscreen wiper

Stephanie Kwolek – Kevlar

You will find some more inventions here, illustrations included when you click on the patent number.

the illustrations are well worth looking at.


No comments:

Post a Comment