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Last week we told you where you can celebrate Women’s History Month. This week I
want to acknowledge a few modern luxuries, inventions and tools that help us run our
lives seamlessly, thanks to the leadership and innovativeness of women.
Take for instance, your morning coffee routine. followed by your re-up at lunch. German
entrepreneur Melitta Bentz, invented what we now know as single serve coffee filters
(i.e. your Keurig Pod). Filter or “drip,” coffee has become consequential to our daily lives
and the efficiency with which we make it now, is due to a woman! Salute!
We also have Ada Lovelace to thank for creating the first computer algorithm in 1843,
and Gra\ce Murray Hopper who assisted in designing Harvard’s Mark I Computer.
Grace developed a compiler that could translate written language into computer code.
And, let’s not forget Josephine Cochran, who invented the modern day dishwasher that
cuts down on time for this laborious chore. For her, I am especially thankful! Florence
Parpart created the electric refrigerator! Seriously, our day-to-day lives as they exist now
would be so different if it weren’t for the ingenuity of women!
Other iconic women inventors include: Marion Donover who invented the disposable
diaper; Bessie Blount Griffin, a physical therapist who invented the feeding tube, which
helped paraplegics in World War II digest their food; Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the inventor
of Rock’N’Roll (I know you’ve been taught it was Elvis. Unlearn that); and Mary
Anderson, the inventor of windshield wipers! Driving would be alot more deadly without
her. Thank you, girl.
While these are only a handful of inventions created by women, they’re super impactful
and pose the question, what can women do and become when granted the recognition
and access to validity (such as product patents) when they have brilliant ideas?
Some of these inventions were dismissed by men and denied until a later date.
Rock’N’Roll has been totally appropriated and credited to men when that couldn’t be
further than the truth.
As women achieve new heights at the speed of light, despite only being granted semi-
autonomy over their own lives in the past 50 years, it’s clear that we have a lot to
celebrate and still a lot to overcome, nationally and globally.
