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

by J. A. Zahm

It is often stated by certain writers who love to indulge in fanciful speculations that women inventors got their ideas as home builders and weavers and potters from nest-building birds, from web-weaving spiders, and from clay workers like termites and mud wasps. Be this as it may, the fact remains in all its inspiring truth that, in the matter of industrialism, as opposed to the militancy of man, we can unhesitatingly declare, with Virgil, Dux femina facti—woman was the leader in all the arts of peace—arts which have been slowly perfected through the ages until they present the extraordinary development which we now witness.

When we contemplate the splendid porcelain wares of Meissen and Sèvres, or the countless varieties of cutlery produced in the factories of Sheffield, or the beautiful textile fabrics from the looms of Lowell and Manchester, or the delicate silks woven in the famous establishments of Lombardy and Southern France, or the countless forms of footwear made in Lynn and Chicago, or the exquisite furs brought from Siberia and the Pribyloff Islands, and dyed in Leipsic and London, or the astonishing output of food products from the factories of Pittsburgh and the immense roller mills of Minneapolis, we little think that the colossal wheels of these vast and varied industries were set in motion by the inventive genius of woman in the dim and distant prehistoric past.

And yet such is the case. Her handiwork from the earliest pottery may be traced through its manifold stages from its first rude beginnings to the most gorgeous creations of ceramic art. The primeval knife of flint or obsidian has become the keen tool of tempered steel; the simple distaff has issued in the intricate Jacquard loom; the metate and pestle actuated by a woman's arm have, by a long process of evolution, developed into our mammoth roller mills impelled by water power, steam or electricity.[230]

But these extraordinary changes from the rude implements of prehistoric time to the complicated machinery of the present is but a change of kind, not one of principle. It is a change due to specialization of work which became possible only when men, liberated from the avocations of hunting and warfare, were able to take up the occupations of women, and develop them in the manner with which we are now familiar.

Why men, rather than women, should have achieved this work of specialization; whether it was due to social causes or to woman's physical and mental organization, or to these various factors combined, we need not inquire; but such is the fact. Whereas in primitive times every woman having a home was a cook, a butcher, a baker, a potter, a weaver, a cutler, a miller, a tanner, a furrier, an engineer, man, in assuming the work which was originally exclusively feminine and performed by one and the same person, has subdivided and specialized by improved forms of machinery and otherwise, so that what is now done is accomplished more rapidly and to better purpose, and with correspondingly greater results in the development of industry and in the progress of civilization.

And the remarkable fact is that many of the most important of these improvements due to specialization have been made within the memory of those yet living, while still others have been originated in quite recent years. Nevertheless, great as has been the work of specialization and coördination in every department of human industry during the last few decades, it is, to judge by the reports of the Patent Office, as yet in little more than its initial stage.

We are now prepared for the consideration of the part woman has taken in this specializing movement and for a discussion of her share in modern inventions and in the improvements of those manifold inventions which were due to her genius and industry untold ages ago. Considering the short time during which her inventive mind has been specially active, and the many handicaps which have been imposed on her, the wonder is not that she has achieved so little in comparison with man, but rather that she has accomplished so much.

The first woman to receive a patent in the United States was Mary Kies. It was issued May 5, 1809, for a process of straw-weaving with silk or thread. Six years later Mary Brush was granted a patent for a corset. It seems to have been quite satisfactory, for no other patent for this article of feminine attire was issued to a woman until 1841, when one was granted to Elizabeth Adams. During the thirty-two years which elapsed between the issuing of a patent to Mary Kies and Elizabeth Adams, but twenty other patents were granted to women. The chief of these were for weaving hats from grass, manufacturing moccasins, whitening leghorn straw, for a sheet-iron shovel, a cook stove and a machine for cutting straw and fodder.

During the decade following 1841, fourteen patents were issued to as many different women. Among the articles patented by them were an ice-cream freezer, a weighing scale and a fan attachment for a rocking chair. It was not recorded, however, that this last invention, valuable as it was apparently, ever became particularly popular. But by far the most remarkable of woman's inventions during this period was a submarine telescope and lamp, for which a patent was awarded in 1845 to Sarah Mather.

From 1851 to 1861, twenty-eight patents were issued to women—just twice the number awarded them during the preceding decade. Most of these patents were for articles of domestic use or feminine apparel. Four of them, however, comprised a scale for instrumental music, for mounting fluid lenses, a fountain pen and an improvement in reaping and mowing machines.