Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

CHAPTER X

WOMEN AS INVENTORS

"There have been very learned women as there have been women warriors, but there have never been women inventors."[227] Thus wrote Voltaire with that flippancy and cocksureness which was so characteristic of the author of the Dictionnaire Philosophique—a man who was ever ready to give, offhand, a categorical answer to any question that came before him for discussion. His countryman, Proudhon, expressed the same opinion in other words when he wrote, Les femmes n'ont rien inventé, pas mème leur quenouille—women have invented nothing, not even their distaff.

Had these two writers thoroughly sifted the evidence available, even in their day, for a proper consideration of this interesting subject, they would, both of them, have reached a very different conclusion from that which is expressed in the sentences just quoted. Had they consulted the records of antiquity, they would have learned that most of the earliest and most important inventions were attributed to women; and, had they studied the reports of explorers among the savage tribes of the modern world, they would have found that these early legends and traditions regarding the inventions of women were fully confirmed by what was being done in their own time. Man's first needs were food, shelter and clothing; and tradition in all parts of the world is unanimous in ascribing to woman the invention, in essentially their present forms, of all the arts most conducive to the preservation and well-being of our race.

In Egypt, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, the inventors of specially useful things were, as a reward of their deserts, enrolled among the gods, as were certain heroes among the ancient Greeks and Romans. Foremost among these was Isis, who laid the foundation of agriculture by the introduction of the culture of wheat and other cereals. Before her time the Egyptians lived on roots and herbs. In lieu of these crude articles of food, Isis gave them bread and other more wholesome aliments. She invented the process of making linen and was the first to apply a sail to the propulsion of a boat. To her also was attributed the art of embalming, the discovery of many medicines and the beginnings of Egyptian literature.

Even more prominent was Pallas Athene, one of the greatest divinities of the Greeks. Virgil, in his Georgics, invokes her as

"Inventor, Pallas, of the fatt'ning oil,
Thou founder of the plow and the plowman's toil."

But not only was she regarded as the oleæ inventrix-inventress of the olive—as Virgil phrases it, but also as the inventor of all handicrafts, whether of women or men. Like Isis, she was deemed the originator of agriculture and many of the mechanic arts. But, above all, she was the inventor of musical instruments and those plastic and graphic arts which have for ages placed Greece in the forefront of civilization and culture.

From the beginning it was woman who first made use of wool and flax for textile fabrics; and of this prehistoric woman one can affirm what Solomon, in his Book of Proverbs, said of the virtuous woman of his day: