Woman in Science Part 29

"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 _oleae 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:

"She seeketh wool and flax and worketh diligently with her hands; She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff."

She was also the first one to weave cotton and silk. It was Mama Oclo, the wife of Manco Capac, as the Inca historian, Garcila.s.so de la Vega, tells us, who taught the women of ancient Peru "to sew and weave cotton and wool and to make clothes for themselves, their husbands and children."

And it was a woman, Se-ling-she, the wife of the emperor, Hw.a.n.g-te, who lived nearly three thousand years before Christ, to whom the most ancient Chinese writers a.s.sign the discovery of silk. Her name is perpetuated in the name China, the G.o.ddess of silkworms, and under this appellation she still receives divine honors.

The preparation and weaving of silk were introduced into j.a.pan by four Chinese girls, and the new industry soon became there, as in China, one of the chief sources, as it is to-day, of the country's wealth. To perpetuate the memory of these four pioneer silk weavers the grateful j.a.panese erected a temple in their honor in the province of Setsu.

According to tradition, the eggs of the silk moth and the seed of the mulberry tree were conveyed to India, concealed in the lining of her headdress, by a Chinese princess. She was thus instrumental in establishing in the region watered by the Indus and the Ganges the same industry which her countrywomen had introduced into the Land of the Rising Sun.

Cashmere shawls and attar of roses, the costliest of perfumes, are attributed to an Indian empress, Nur Mahal, whom her husband, in view of her achievements, as well as on account of his pa.s.sionate love for her, called "The Light of the World."[228]

And what shall we say of those exquisite creations of woman's brain and hand--needle-point and pillow lace? These two inventions, like the manufacture of silk, have given employment to tens of thousands of women throughout the world; and, in such countries as Italy, Belgium and France, where lace-making has received special attention, they have for centuries been most prolific sources of revenue. Silk fabrics in ancient Rome were worth their weight in gold. The finest specimens of point lace are, even to-day, as highly prized as precious stones, and, like the great masterpieces of plastic art, are handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation. In no other instance, except possibly in the hairspring of a watch, is there such an extraordinary difference in value between the raw material and the finished product as there is in the case of the finest thread lace.

A great sensation was caused in Italy a few decades ago when a humble workwoman, Signora Ba.s.sani, succeeded in rediscovering the peculiar st.i.tch of the celebrated Venetian point, which had been lost for centuries. She was at once granted a patent for her invention, which was by her countrymen regarded as an event of national importance.

After painting and sculpture, probably no art has contributed more to the development of the esthetic sense among the nations of the world than has the art whose chief tools are the needle and the bobbin in the deft hands of a beauty-loving woman. If the name of the first lace-maker had not been lost in the mists of antiquity, it is reasonable to suppose that she, too, would long since have had a monument erected to her memory, as well as the weavers of silk and makers of attar of roses and cashmere shawls. She was surely as deserving of such an honor.

More conclusive information respecting woman as an inventor is, strange as it may appear, afforded by a systematic study of the various races of mankind which are still in a state of savagery. Such a study discloses the interesting fact that woman, contrary to the declaration of Proudhon, has not only been the inventor of the distaff, but that she has furthermore--pace Voltaire--been the inventor of all the peaceful arts of life, and the inventor, too, of the earliest forms of nearly all the mechanical devices now in use in the world of industry.

Architecture, as well as many other things, was credited by the ancient Greeks to Minerva. This was a poetical way of stating the fact--now generally accepted by men of science--that women were the first homemakers. But the first home was a very simple and a very humble structure. When not a cave, it was a simple shelter made of bark or skins, sufficient to afford protection to the mother and her child.

Subsequently it was a lodge made of earth, of stone or wattle work or adobe.

Women were, in the light of anthropology, as well as in that of mythology and tradition, the first to discover the nutritive and medicinal values of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots and vegetables. They were consequently the first gardeners and agriculturists and the first to build up a materia medica. While men were engaged in the chase or in warfare, women were gradually perfecting those divers domestic arts which, in the course of time, became their recognized specialties. They soon found that it was better to cultivate certain food plants and trees than to depend on them for nourishment in the wild state. This was particularly true in the case of such useful and widely distributed species as wheat, rice, maize, the yam, potato, banana and ca.s.sava.

At first most of these food products were used in the raw state, but woman's quick inventive genius was not long in making one of the most important and far-reaching discoveries--a method for producing fire. In a certain sense this was the greatest discovery ever made, and the Greeks showed their appreciation of the value of it by a.s.serting that fire was stolen from heaven. Considering its multifarious uses in heating and cooking, thereby immensely adding to the comfort and well-being of primitive man, we are not surprised that in certain parts of the world fire has always been considered something sacred, and that the old Romans inst.i.tuted Vestal Virgins, and the ancient Peruvians Virgins of the Sun, to preserve this precious element and have it ever ready when required for sacrifice or for any of their various liturgical functions. If any one ever deserved a "monument more durable than bronze," it was the woman who, "on the edge of time," first drew the Promethean spark from a piece of pyrites by striking it with flint or produced it by the friction of two pieces of wood.

After building a home and establishing in it a fireplace for the preparation of food, woman's next concern was to secure more raiment than was afforded by the traditional fig leaf. This she found in the bark of certain trees, in the fiber of hemp and cotton and in the wool of sheep and goats. With these and her distaff she spun thread, and from the thread thus obtained she was by means of her primitive loom--likewise her invention--able to provide all kinds of textile fabrics for clothing for herself and family.

But there was much more to invent before the home of primitive man, or rather primitive woman, could be considered as fairly equipped.

Furniture and culinary utensils were required, and these, too, were provided by the deft and cunning fingers of woman. She was the first potter and the first basketmaker; and anyone who has lived among the savages of any land, especially among the aborigines in the interior of South America, knows what an important part is played in domestic economy by native basketry and ceramic ware. Both of these articles were at first of the simplest character, but woman's innate esthetic sense soon enabled her to produce those highly ornate specimens of pottery and basketry that are so highly prized in the public and private collections of this country and Europe.

The first device for converting grain into flour was, like the many other articles already named, the invention of woman. Whether the simple mortar and pestle of the North American Indian, or the Mexican metate and muller, or the Irish quern, it was, in every case, the product of woman's brain and handiwork, as it was also the basal prototype of our most improved types of flouring mills. And so was the soapstone pot--the predecessor of the iron or bra.s.s kettle--a woman's invention, as well as many similar contrivances for preparing food.

But what is probably the most remarkable culinary invention of woman in the state of savagery is her unique contrivance for converting the poisonous root of the _manihot utilissima_--the staple food of tropical America--into a wholesome and nutritious aliment. It is a bag, called _matapi_, which serves both as a press and as a sieve. For the inhabitants of the vast basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco, where the chief articles of diet are derived from the manihot and the plantain, this invention of woman is the most important ever made and ranks in importance with the discovery by the same skilled food purveyor of the dietetic value of manihot itself.

The first knife was a woman's invention, as the arrow-head and the spear point were the inventions of her hunter husband. It was in the beginning a most primitive implement; but, whether in the form of a simple flake of flint of obsidian, or in that of an Eskimo ulu--the woman's knife--it was the archetype of all the forms of cutlery now in use. With this rude knife the primitive housewife skinned and carved the game brought to her by her male companion. With it she sc.r.a.ped the interior of the hide and cut it up into articles of clothing. She was thus the first furrier and tailor. With it she made the first sandals and moccasins, and, in doing so, became the first shoemaker and the original St. Crispin.

To woman, the originator of the first home, is due also the invention of the oven and the chimney. She was also the first maker of salt--that all-important condiment and sanitary agent--and the first to obtain nitre from wood ashes. She was the first engineer, as is evinced in her invention of the parbuckle and in the bamboo conduit, which was the predecessor of the great ca.n.a.ls of Babylonia[229] and the imposing aqueducts of ancient Rome.

Important, however, as are all the foregoing inventions, we must not forget what was an equally important contribution by woman to the welfare and progress of our race--the domestication of animals. No discovery after that of artificially producing fire has contributed more toward the development of our race than the taming of milk- and fleece-bearing animals, like the cow, the sheep, the goat and the llama, or of burden-bearing animals, like the horse, the a.s.s, the camel and the reindeer, or of hunting and watching animals like the faithful, ubiquitous dog. For, in the first place, the domestication of these supremely useful animals diminished man's labor as burden bearers. It likewise supplemented the fecundity of women and facilitated the multiplication of the race, because it supplied to the child a nourishment that previously could be obtained only from the mother, who had been obliged to suckle her young several years longer than was necessary after the friendly goat and cow came to her aid. Still another consequence of the domestication of animals was that it immensely diminished the amount of woman's care and labor, afforded her the necessary leisure to develop the arts of refinement, and stimulated intellectual growth in a way that otherwise would have been impossible.

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 Sevres, 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 a.s.suming 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 coordination 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 gra.s.s, 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.

The following decade is remarkable for the wonderful increase in the number of inventions due to women, for there was a sudden jump from twenty-eight to four hundred and forty-one patents awarded them between the years 1861 and 1871. Women now began to have confidence in their inventive faculties, and, no longer content with exercising their genius on articles of clothing and culinary utensils, sewing, washing and churning machines, they began to devote their attention to objects that were entirely foreign to their ordinary home activities. This is clearly evinced by the patents they obtained for such inventions as improvements in locomotive wheels, devices for reducing straw and other fibrous substances for the manufacture of paper pulp, improvements in corn huskers, low-water indicators, steam and other whistles, corn plows, a method of constructing screw propellers, improvements in materials for packing journals and bearings, in fire alarms, thermometers, railroad car heaters, improvements in lubricating railway journals, in conveyors of smoke and cinders for locomotives, in pyrotechnic night signals, burglar alarms, railway car safety apparatus, in apparatus for punching corrugated metals, desulphurizing ores and other similar inventions in the domain of mechanical engineering, inventions that, at first blush, would seem to be quite alien to the genius and capacity of woman.

From now on women's inventions in the United States increased at an extraordinary rate, for from 1871 until July 1, 1888, when the first government report was made on the patents issued to women inventors, she had to her credit nearly two thousand inventions, many of which were of prime importance.[231]

During the seven years following 1888 she was awarded twenty-five hundred and twenty-six patents--more than the total number that had been granted her during the preceding seventy-nine years. Between 1895 and 1910, three thousand six hundred and fifteen more patents were placed to her credit, making a grand total for her first century of inventive achievement of eight thousand five hundred and ninety-six patents. No Patent Office reports are available since 1910, but the number of inventions for which women have received patents since Mary Kies was awarded hers on May 5, 1809, for "straw-weaving with silk or thread,"

cannot be far from ten thousand. This fact will, doubtless, be a revelation to that large cla.s.s of men who still seem to share the views of Voltaire and Proudhon that women are incapable of inventing even the simplest article of domestic use.

The following story well ill.u.s.trates the prevailing ignorance regarding the part women have taken in the invention of certain articles that are so common that most people think they were never patented.

"I was out driving once with an old farmer in Vermont," writes Mrs. Ada C. Bowles, "and he told me, 'You women may talk about your rights, but why don't you invent something?' I answered, 'Your horse's feed bag and the shade over his head were both of them invented by women.' The old fellow was so taken aback that he was barely able to gasp, 'Do tell!'"

Had he investigated further he would have found that the flynet on his horse's back, the tugs and other harness tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, the shoes on his horse's feet[232] and the buggy seat he then occupied were all the inventions of women. He would, doubtless, also have discovered that the currycomb he had used before starting out on his drive, as well as the snap hook of the halter and the checkrein and the stall unhitching device were likewise the inventions of members of that s.e.x whose capacity he was so disposed to depreciate; for women have been awarded patents--in some instances several of them--for all the articles that have been mentioned. He might furthermore have learned that the fellies in his buggy wheels and his daughter's side saddle had been made under women's patents; and that, to complete his surprise and confusion, the leather used in his harness had been sewn by a machine patented by a woman who was not only an inventor but who was also for many years the manager and proprietor of a large harness factory in New York City.

What particularly arrests one's attention in reading the Patent Office reports is not only the large number of inventions by women, but also the very wide range of the devices which they embrace. It is not surprising to find them inventing and improving culinary utensils, house furniture and furnishings, toilet articles, wearing apparel and stationery, trunks and bags, toys and games, designs for printed and textile fabrics, for boxes and baskets, screens, awnings, baby carriers, musical instruments, appliances for washing and cleaning, attachments for bicycles and type-writing machines, art, educational and medical appliances; for these things are in keeping with their proper _metier_; but it is surprising for those who are not familiar with the history of modern inventions to learn of the share women have had in inventing and improving agricultural implements, building appurtenances, motors of various kinds, plumbing apparatus, theatrical stage mechanisms, and, above all, countless railway appliances from a coupling or fender to an apparatus for sanding railroad tracks, or a device for unloading boxcars.

Those who are still of the opinion of Voltaire and Proudhon--and their name is legion--respecting woman's inventive powers, might be willing to accord to her the capacity to design a new form of clothes pin, or hair crimper, or rouge pad, or complexion mask, or powder puff, or baby jumper; but they would limit her ability to contrivances of this character. But what would these same people say if they were told that over and above the things just mentioned for which many women have actually received patents, the much depreciated female s.e.x had been granted patents for locomotive wheels, stuffing boxes, railway car safety apparatus, life rafts, cut-offs for hydraulic and other engines, street cars, mining machines, furnaces for smelting ores, sound-deadening attachments for railway cars, feed pumps and transfer apparatus for traction cars, machines for driving hoops on to barrels, apparatus for destroying vegetation on and removing snow from railroads, c.o.ke crushers, artificial stone compositions, elevated railways, new forms of cattle cars, dams and reservoirs, welding seams of pipes and hardening iron, alloys for bell metal and alloys to resemble silver, methods of refining and hardening copper, processes for concentrating ores, improvement in elevators and designs for raising sunken vessels?

And yet, incredible as it may appear to these scoffers at woman's genius, patents for all these inventions, methods and processes--many of them of exceeding value--and for hundreds of others of a similar nature, have been issued to women during recent years. And the activity of the fair inventors, far from abating, is becoming daily more p.r.o.nounced, and promises to reward their efforts with far greater triumphs. Indeed, women are becoming so active in the numerous fields of invention--even in such unlikely ones as metallurgy and civil, mechanical and electrical engineering--that they bid fair to rival men in what they have long regarded as their peculiar specialty.

In 1892 a woman in New York was granted two patents, one for a process of malting beer and the other for hooping malt liquors. These inventions, however, are not so foreign to the avocation of woman as they at first appear. For, if we may believe the teachings of ethnology and prehistoric archaeology in this matter, women were the first brewers.

The one, therefore, who two decades ago secured the two patents just mentioned was but taking up anew an occupation in which her s.e.x furnished the first invention many thousand years ago.

An instructive fact touching woman's inventive achievements is that her fullest success is coincident with her enlarged opportunities for education, and began with the breaking down of the prejudices which so long existed against her having anything to do with the development of the mechanical or industrial arts. When one recollects that the public schools of Boston, established in 1642, were not open to girls until a century and a half later, and then only for the most elementary branches and for but one-half the year; and that girls did not have the benefit of a high school education in the center of New England culture until 1852; and when one furthermore recalls the att.i.tude of the general public toward women and girls extending their activities beyond the nursery and the kitchen, it is easy to understand that there was not much encouragement for them to exercise their inventive talent, even if they had felt an inclination to do so.

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 ill.u.s.trates 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.