Educator works to give women inventors more recognition

Back before women got the vote and began to stand up for themselves, women inventors often went unrecognized. Historian and educator Amy Clarke is trying to change all that, by seeing those women now get credit for their work.

Clarke is education director of Inventerrific™, a company devoted to sharing history through patents taken out by American inventors. At a presentation given during the Local History Conference held March 19 in Dearborn, Clarke revealed a group of little known women inventors, including some from Michigan, and shared some surprising information.

She started with Catherine Littlefield Greene, inventor of the cotton gin, and not the name most associate with that machine. In history books, Eli Whitney gets the credit.

"Her husband was an aide to George Washington," Clarke said. "When he died, he left her with a plantation to run and four kids to raise. She hired Eli Whitney to tutor her children."

Greene had an idea to make work in the fields a little easier, and she had Whitney do the construction work. Clarke said slaves may also have been involved in developing the machine, as they had the most experience with field work.

"She allowed (Eli Whitney) to put his name on the patent, because that was the socially correct thing to do," Clarke explained, adding women who were married did the same thing. "Social class made a huge difference in recognition. If a woman inventor was lucky enough to have a husband who supported her work, his name would go on the patent."

Michigan women inventors

Michigan had hundreds of patents filed in the late 18th and early 19th century, and one of them was for a washing machine, invented by Margaret Calvin of Battle Creek. While her invention enjoyed great commercial success, Mrs. Calvin's obituary made only a passing reference to it, Clarke said.

Clarissa Britain held six patents, including one for an ambulance designed to safely take soldiers off the battlefield. Maria Webster, the daughter of a Farmington founding family, held just one patent, for a hand and foot powered carriage.

Perhaps the best known woman on Clark's list was Anna Bissell, of Bissell vacuum cleaner fame. When her husband passed away, Anna refused to sell the business, and she became the first female CEO of a Michigan corporation, Clarke said.

Another woman who reached the top of the corporate ladder, Ruth Handler, invented the Barbie™ doll, which brought great success to the Mattell toy company co-founded by her husband. She let an engineer at Mattell take the patent for the doll. "That's very common even now," Clarke explained. "Most patents are held inside corporations."

After experiencing breast cancer and a mastectomy, Mrs. Handler also invented a more comfortable prosthesis. The patent for it was eventually sold to Kimberly-Clark.

Hedy Lamarr and World War II

Perhaps the most intriguing story was that of 1940s film siren Hedy Lamarr, who is credited with having developed a remote torpedo control system.

"She was a tremendous example of beauty and brains," Clarke said, adding Lamarr had married an arms dealer who had no scruples, and ended up counting Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussollini among his clients. Lamarr overheard their conversations, realized war was coming and fled her Salzburg home, on a boat that also happened to be carrying film mogul Louis B. Mayer.

That's how she got her start in films, but later, she and a musician friend developed a mechanism to rapidly change radio frequencies, to thwart enemies trying to jam torpedo signals.

"During the war, they asked people to send in ideas to a council that reviewed them," Clarke said. "She sent it in. There's a Michigan connection, Charles Kettering was head of that council."

While the patent sat largely unnoticed for some time, it was picked up in the 1960s by Sylvania. The company tweaked it, and the idea of frequency hopping because a workable thing, Clarke said. It's now used in cell phones and wireless technology and has created the foundation for more than 1,200 patents.

In today's tough economic times, Clarke said, we need innovators and inventors like the women whose stories she shared. "The stories of these women inventors, I hope, will inspire young people, and especially girls."