Saturday, March 14, 2015

WOMEN SPECIAL ........................... Big ideas by women

Big ideas by women

Necessity, the sages said, is the mother of invention. Twist it. What if I tell you that the mother found a necessity and took to invention. So, a mother is the mother of invention. No, I am not word-twerking. Women have been big inventors.Here, I am not talking of Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium, who became the first female Nobel Prize winner in 1903. Or, of Nobel Laureate Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgin, who discovered the structures of Vitamin B12, Nor of Gertrude Eliot, the only woman inventor inducted into The Inventors Hall of Fame.She invented the leukemia-fighting drug 6-mercapto.Here, I am talking about how women changed everyone's every day. Women invented everyday things.The windshield wiper. The square-bottom paper bag. Disposable diaper. Foot-pedal trash can. Dishwasher. Scotchguard. Liquid paper. Retractable dog leash.Kevlar. Monopoly. I bet, you did not know this. All these everyday things have been invented by women.

DISPOSABLE DIAPERS
The baby leaks. Babies leak till they are potty trained. Changing cotton nappies can drive any mother insane (imagine, the day when the baby has diarrhoea). Marion Donovan snipped a shower curtain to make the waterproof diaper cover. It was in 1951 that Donovan sold the first Boater diaper at Saks Fifth Avenue, New York, and later the patent for $1million. Pampers was born in 1961. Babies still leak but nappy-changing no longer drives moms crazy.

SQUARE-BOTTOM PAPER BAGS
When you go shopping and bring that bunch of asparagus and bottles of shampoo in a paper bag, did you notice its square bottom? In the beginning paper bags were like envelopes and were daft as bags. Until, cotton mill worker Margaret Knight invented a machine that could cut and glue square bottoms to a paper bag. That divided weight across the base and shopping changed forever.

LIQUID WHITENER
Much before there was the Delete key on the PC, secretarys would clank the typewriter keys and write long letters. And they made their mistakes. Typos. Secretary Bette Nesmith Graham was smart. She secretly used white tempera paint to cover up her typing errors. She spent hours in the kitchen perfecting the formula and patented Liquid Paper in 1958.
Gillette bought her company in 1979 for $47.5 million! And that sure is no typo.

FOOT-PEDAL TRASH CAN
Lillian Gilbreth was smart. In the early 1900s she invented the shelves inside a refrigerator. That was not the end of her ingenuity. She tidied up cleaning when she invented a foot-pedal trash can. Next time, while throwing the garbage in the pedal trash can say a mighty thank you to Gilbreth.

WINDSHIELD WIPERS
Driving to work or on a first date and rain plays spoilsport. It starts pouring. Not cats and dogs. But fat raindrops on your car windshield. To beat the drops and drive on, you just turn the windshield wiper on. Go back to 1903, Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper. But there weren't many takers. People thought it was safer to drive on in snow and rain than pull a lever. Cadillac bought into the idea and became the first company to include wipers in all car models.

SCOTCHGUARD
It happened in a lab. It was an accident. One day 3M (or Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company as it was previously called), chemist Patsy Sherman noticed that the fluorochemical rubber spilled on a lab assistant's shoe wouldn't come off. But the stain repelled water, oil, and other liquids without changing the colour of the shoe. Sherman and her coinventor Samuel Smith called it Scotchguard.

 THINKSTOCK RETRACTABLE DOG LEASH
Roufus is the big fat dog. So naughty during walks that he pulls you along with his leash.A retractable dog leash keeps you safe and gives a long rope to Roufus. New York City dogowner Mary A. Delaney patented the first retractable leading device in 1908.

THE DISHWASHER
The party's over, the guests have gone home, your eyelids are laden with sleep but it is the pile of dishes in the sink that tanks your heart. Ah! The dirty dish-party hangover. You look at the dishwasher and thank the modern contraption. Well, shed that modern bit in gratitude for this woman. Josephine Cochrane, the dishwasher inventor, patented it in 1886.It sure wasn't as sleek.Josephine's dishwasher combined high water pressure, a wheel, a boiler and a wire rack.

OTHER INVENTIONS BY WOMEN
Circular saw: Tabitha Babbitt invented the circular saw. The circular saw was hooked up to a water powered machine to reduce the effort to cut lumber. She watched men use the difficult two-man whipsaw and noticed that half their motion was wasted.The first circular saw she made is in Albany, New York. She did not patent the circular saw so that it could be used by others.
Monopoly: The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903, when American Elizabeth (Lizzie) J Magie Phillips created a game through which she hoped to be able to explain the single tax theory of Henry PIC: CORBIS George. It was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies.
Kevlar: Stephanie Louise Kwolek, an American chemist,is best known for inventing the first of a family of synthetic fibres of exceptional strength and stiffness: poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide -better known as Kevlar. She was amazed to find that the new fibre would not break when nylon typically did. Not only was it stronger than nylon, Kevlar was five times stronger than steel by weight.
Alphabet Blocks: Author Adeline DT Whitney invented wooden blocks to help kids learn their ABCs. She patented it in 1882.
Apgar score: Virginia Apgar, an American obstetrical anesthesiologist, invented the Apgar score in 1952 as a simple and replicable method to quickly assess the health of newborn children immediately after birth. .
Folding cabinet bed: Sarah Elizabeth Goode was an inventor. Her invention came out of necessity with people living in small homes.Goode invented a folding cabinet bed which provided people who lived in small spaces to utilise their space efficiently. When the bed was folded up, it looked like a desk. It had spaces for storage.
Submarine telescope and lamp: Sarah Mather's Submarine Telescope is one of the earliest scientific instruments credited to a female inventor.
Preeti Verma Lal

TL8MAR15

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