The experience of Miss Margaret Knight, of Boston, who in 1871 was awarded a valuable patent for making a paper-bag machine is a case in point and well illustrates some of the difficulties that women inventors had to contend with only a few decades ago.
"As a child," she writes to a friend, "I never cared for the things that girls usually do; dolls never had any charms for me. I couldn't see the sense of coddling bits of porcelain with senseless faces; the only things I wanted were a jackknife, a gimlet and pieces of wood. My friends were horrified. I was called a tomboy, but that made very little impression on me. I sighed sometimes because I was not like other girls, but wisely concluded that I couldn't help it, and sought further consolation from my tools. I was always making things for my brothers. Did they want anything in the line of playthings, they always said, 'Mattie will make them for us.' I was famous for my kites, and my sleds were the envy and admiration of all the boys in town. I'm not surprised at what I've done; I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly."
Even after she had demonstrated her skill as an inventor, Miss Knight had to encounter the skepticism of the workmen to whom she entrusted the manufacture of her machines. They questioned her ability to superintend her own work, and it was only her persistency and remarkable competency that ultimately converted their incredulity into respect and admiration.
Since women have come into the possession of greater freedom than they formerly enjoyed, and have been afforded better opportunities of developing their inventive faculties, many of them have taken to invention as an occupation, and with marked success. They find it the easiest and most congenial way of earning a livelihood, and not a few of them have been able thereby to accumulate comfortable fortunes, besides developing industries that have given employment to thousands of both sexes.
Thus the straw industry in the United States is due to Miss Betsy Metcalf, who, more than a century ago, produced the first straw bonnet ever manufactured in this country. Since then the industry which this woman originated has assumed immense proportions. The number of straw hats now made in Massachusetts alone, not to speak of those annually manufactured elsewhere, runs into the millions.
Scarcely less wonderful is the industry developed by Miss Knight, already mentioned, through her marvelous invention for manufacturing satchel-bottom paper bags. Many men had previously essayed to solve the problem which she attacked with such signal success, but all to no purpose. So valuable was her invention considered by experts that she refused fifty thousand dollars for it shortly after taking out her patent.
Often what are apparently the most trivial inventions prove the most lucrative. Thus, a Chicago woman receives a handsome income for her invention of a paper pail. A woman in San Francisco invented a baby carriage, and received fourteen thousand dollars for her patent. The gimlet-pointed screw, which was the idea of a little girl, has realized to its patentee an independent fortune. Still more remarkable is the Burden horseshoe machine, the invention of a woman, which turns out a complete horseshoe every three seconds and which is said to have effected a saving to the public of tens of millions of dollars.
The cotton gin, one of the most useful and important of American inventions—a machine that effected a complete revolution in the cotton industry throughout the world—is due to a woman, Catherine L. Greene, the wife of General Nathaniel Greene, of Revolutionary fame. After she had fully developed in her own mind a method for separating the cotton from its seed, which was after her husband's death, she intrusted the making of the machine to Eli Whitney, who was then boarding with her, and who had a Yankee's skill in the use of tools. Whitney was several times on the point of abandoning as impossible the task which had been assigned to him, but Mrs. Greene's faith in ultimate success never wavered, and, thanks to her persistence in the work and the putting into execution of her ideas, her great undertaking was finally crowned with success. She did not apply for a patent for her invention in her own name, because so opposed was public opinion to woman's having part in mechanical occupation that she would have exposed herself to general ridicule and to a loss of position in society. The consequence was that Whitney—her employee—got credit for an invention which, in reality, belonged to her. She was, however, subsequently able to retain a subordinate interest in it through her second husband, Mr. Miller.
This is only one of many instances in which patents, taken out in the name of some man, are really due to women. The earliest development of the mower and reaper, as well as the clover cleaner, belongs to Mrs. A. H. Manning, of Plainfield, New Jersey. The patent on the clover cleaner was issued in the name of her husband; but, as he failed to apply for a patent for the mower and reaper, his wife was, after his death, robbed of the fruit of her brain by a neighbor, whose name appears on the list of patentees of an invention which originated with Mrs. Manning.
A few years ago men of science awoke to the startling fact that the earth's supply of nitrates was being rapidly exhausted. It was then realized that, unless some new store of this essential fertilizer could be found, it would soon be impossible to provide the food requisite for the world's teeming millions. What was to be done? Never was a more important problem presented to science for solution, and never did science more quickly and efficaciously respond. It was soon recognized that the earth's atmosphere was the only available storehouse for the much-needed nitrogen. Forthwith scientists and inventors the world over proceeded to tap this source of supply and to convert its vast stores of nitrogen into the nitrates which are so indispensable to vegetable life.