It’s no surprise that women have been the masterminds behind many everyday conveniences. Think about the dishwasher, an 1893 invention by Josephine Garis Cochran, or the foot-pedal trash can, brought to us by Lillian Moller Gilbreth (you might know her as the mother from Cheaper by the Dozen). Marion Donovan even developed an early version of the disposable diaper in the 1950s.
From the very start of the United States, women have made countless, often uncredited, contributions. These contributions, both big and small, continue to help us, entertain us, enrich our nation, improve our health, and even save lives. Let’s shine a light on ten such women whose work you’re familiar with, even if their names aren’t.
10. The Declaration of Independence
No, Thomas Jefferson didn’t have a woman guiding his hand as he wrote those famous words. By mid-July 1776, the text of the Declaration of Independence was appearing in colonial newspapers. However, it wasn’t until the following January, after George Washington’s Christmas Day crossing of the Delaware and victory at Trenton, that the Continental Congress dared to distribute the first edition identifying the signers. They needed official copies printed and distributed. And there, beneath the names of John Hancock, John Adams, and other rebels, King George III would have seen the bold printer’s mark: “Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard.”
Mary Katharine Goddard (1738-1816) was an experienced publisher, having worked on the Providence Gazette in Rhode Island and the Pennsylvania Chronicle in Philadelphia before taking over the Maryland Journal in 1774. As the American Revolution approached, she reported on its early battles, reprinted Thomas Paine’s influential pamphlet Common Sense, and encouraged women to boycott British goods. In October 1775, she became Baltimore’s postmaster, a position she held until 1789, potentially making her the new nation’s first female federal employee.
9. Paper Bags
An innovation doesn’t have to change history to profoundly affect daily life. If you’ve ever chosen “paper or plastic?” and opted for paper, you have Margaret E. Knight (1838-1914) to thank. After her father passed away when she was twelve, she began working in a Manchester, New Hampshire, textile mill. Within a year, she had invented a safety device to prevent loom shuttles from flying off and injuring weavers. After various other jobs, she joined the Columbia Paper Bag company, where flat-bottom paper bags were specialty items crafted by hand. To automate this, she designed and built a machine that could feed, cut, and fold paper, then form the square bottom of the bag.
Knight had earned no money from her loom safety device, so this time she took the unusual step—for a woman—of applying for a patent. When a man who had seen her machine during its development tried to claim the invention as his, she fought back. He argued that no woman could have possibly designed such a complex machine. In response, she presented her detailed blueprints, while he offered no evidence. She won the case and received her patent in 1871. Knight later founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company in Hartford, Connecticut, and went on to receive patents for at least twenty-six more inventions.
8. “America the Beautiful”
Katharine Lee Bates (1858-1929) was an English instructor at Wellesley College, her alma mater near Boston. In the summer of 1893, she took a cross-country train journey to Colorado Springs for a three-week teaching assignment. On her way, she visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, whose famed White City fairgrounds she would later describe as “alabaster cities.” While in the West, she and other professors took a wagon to the summit of Pike’s Peak. As she later recounted, “It was then and there, as I was looking out over the seas-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.”
Her finished poem, initially titled “Pike’s Peak,” was published in the weekly newspaper The Congregationalist on July 4, 1895. A small payment for this publication was the only money Bates ever received for the poem, even though her words were set to music numerous times. While few may know about Bates Dorm at Wellesley or visit her bronze statue facing Pike’s Peak at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, nearly everyone knows the first verse of her beloved song.
7. Medical Syringe
In recent times, injections have become a familiar part of life. A syringe, in its basic form, is a pump with a plunger fitting tightly inside a cylindrical tube. The plunger can be moved to draw in or expel liquid or gas through an opening at the tube’s end. This opening can be fitted with a hypodermic needle, nozzle, or tubing to direct the flow.
Syringes themselves date back to ancient Greek and Roman times, though they weren’t used for injecting medication but for applying ointments. The 9th-century AD Egyptian surgeon Ammar ibn Ali al-Mawsili created a syringe using a hollow glass tube and suction for cataract extraction. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century that syringes took on their more recognizable form with the hypodermic needle.
Early designs for syringes with hollow needles fine enough to pierce skin appeared around 1844. These devices, operated by a plunger or screw, were large and required two hands. Letitia Mumford Geer (1852-1935), a New York nurse, revolutionized healthcare with her 1899 patent for a compact syringe that could be operated with one hand. This made it easier for medical professionals, and even patients, to use. While little is known about her life beyond her death in Kings County, New York, the fundamental design of her invention endures.
6. Monopoly
In 1904, while working as a secretary, Elizabeth “Lizzie” J. Magie (1866-1948) patented what she called The Landlord’s Game. Its detailed rules involved players rolling dice to land on spaces with varying costs for rent and purchase, including Water Franchise, Light Franchise, four railroads, and Public Parking. Each time they passed the square “Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages,” they collected $100. Does that sound familiar?
Her 1924 revised patent featured properties with increasing values and names like Lonely Lane, Rickety Row, Progress Park, and Easy Street. It also included a statement that the game was intended not just for amusement but to show players the unfair financial advantages of greedy landlords.
Magie’s game circulated in various forms for a decade before Charles Darrow played a version with Atlantic City property names. In 1935, Darrow sold his version to Parker Brothers, falsely claiming, “being unemployed at the time, and badly needing anything to occupy my time, I made by hand a very crude game for the sole purpose of amusing myself.”
Over two million copies were sold in the first two years, and Darrow made a fortune in royalties. Also in 1935, Lizzie Magie Phillips (by then married) sold her patent to Parker Brothers for just $500, hoping to reach a wider audience with her warning about economic inequality. Instead, Monopoly taught generations that greed is good. Ironically, Magie Phillips’ role and her original intent were brought to light in the 1970s during a trademark dispute over another game: Anti-Monopoly.
5. Kevlar
This superplastic is perhaps best known for its use in bullet-proof vests, but Stephanie L. Kwolek (1923-2014) discovered Kevlar while researching a new lightweight material for tires to improve car fuel efficiency. Born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, she developed a love for fabrics and sewing from her mother and a passion for science from her father. In 1946, she graduated from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College with a chemistry degree. To save money for medical school, she took a job as a chemist at a DuPont research lab, where she ultimately spent her entire career.
During her experiments in 1965, Kwolek created a cloudy solution that, when spun, produced a heat-resistant fiber that was lightweight yet five times stronger than steel. Today, Kevlar is used in a wide range of products, from helmets and brake pads to body armor. Though she received multiple awards and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the aspiring doctor once said of her discovery, “I don’t think there’s anything like saving someone’s life to bring you satisfaction and happiness.”
4. 3D Movies
If you’ve ever jumped in your movie theater seat because an object seemed to fly right at you, you can thank Valerie Thomas (1943– ). Despite not being encouraged to study science as a child, she earned a physics degree from Morgan State University, one of only two women in her class to major in the subject. After graduating, she began working at NASA as a data analyst and mathematician, remaining there until her retirement in 1995.
In addition to her work on the Landsat program, which captures images of Earth from space, she invented an “illusion transmitter.” This device uses two curved mirrors and a camera to reflect an image to the eye at two different angles. These angles combine in the brain to create the illusion of three dimensions. While not the first 3D technique, Thomas received a patent in 1980 for her uniquely simple invention.
3. Vietnam Veterans Memorial
When “The Wall,” as it’s often called, was dedicated in 1982 in Washington, D.C., its design was as controversial as the war whose veterans it honored. A panel of eight artists and designers reviewed over 1,400 anonymous submissions. They ultimately selected the work of Maya Lin (1959– ), who was, at the time, a 21-year-old undergraduate architecture student at Yale. She had created her design for a class project.
Lin was born in Ohio to parents who had fled mainland China. Her simple yet powerful design for a V-shaped wall, now inscribed with over 58,000 names, only earned her a B for the assignment. However, she notably beat her professor in the national competition.
2. Laser Photoablative Cataract Surgery
This medical term might not be common knowledge, even by its more approachable name, the Laserphaco Probe. Yet, it’s very likely that someone you know can read these words because of it. Patricia Era Bath (1942-2019), a Howard Medical School graduate, had already achieved an impressive list of accomplishments and “firsts” when she became the first African American female doctor to receive a medical patent in 1988.
Her device uses laser technology to break up and remove cataracts, which cloud vision as people age. This method is faster, easier, and less invasive than previous techniques. In 2014, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recognized her invention as “one of the most important developments in the field of ophthalmology,” noting it had “helped restore or improve vision to millions of patients worldwide.”
1. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Marian R. Croak (1955-) earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1982 and immediately began working at AT&T’s Bell Laboratory. During the 1990s, her pioneering work fundamentally changed how we communicate. She received over one hundred patents related to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies.
This is the electronic wizardry that enables video chat and has allowed millions to perform diverse tasks like voting for contestants on American Idol or donating to charities via text message. She is a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame class of 2022, joining the late Dr. Bath as one of the few Black women to receive this honor.
These ten women are just a few examples of the many whose ingenuity and hard work have left a lasting mark on our world. Their stories remind us that groundbreaking contributions can come from anyone, anywhere, and that many brilliant minds have historically been overlooked.
What other unsung female innovators do you admire? Share their stories and your thoughts in the comments below!
