Water Cooler: Learn about inventions created by women for Women’s History Month

It might seem like a recent trend for more women to be entering STEM fields, but women have a long history of contributing to innovations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Inventor Mary Dixon Kies became the first woman to receive a U.S. patent in 1809, less than two decades after the creation of the first United States patent in 1790. Celebrate Women’s History Month by learning more about the inventions created by women in the United States, starting with Kies.

Mary Dixon Kies was born in Connecticut. Her father was a farmer born in Ireland. She worked in the straw-weaving industry, which was booming during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. In response to the war, the United States placed a ban on all trade with Great Britain and France. This created a gap in the market for hat-making, which involved braiding straw thanks to an innovation made by another American woman, Betsy Metcalf.

Her method of braiding straw led to a new industry for women because the straw bonnets could be made at home and relied only on locally available materials. Although white women were allowed to apply for patents in the United States, Metcalf never sought a patent because she, like the majority of women, was not legally able to hold property.

Kies became the first female patent-holder because she chose to break this pattern. She invented a new technique that weaved straw with silk and thread, which increased cost-efficiency of hat-making and strengthened the hat economy in New England.

That is an early excerpt in the history of inventions created by women, but the stories only get better from there. Jump forward in time to innovations in a field we couldn’t imagine living without today – computer science.

Grace Hopper was a United States Navy rear admiral and legendary computer scientist. She was the first person to create a theory of programming languages that could be used on any computer system, rather than a language that was tied to one specific machine. This is called machine-independent programming language.

She did not retire officially from the military until 1986. She tried, but was repeatedly either called back or asked to return to military service for almost 20 years. When she finally retired, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer of the U.S. Navy at the ages of 79. After she retired from the Navy, she went on to be a senior consultant for a major American computer industry company until her death in 1992 at 85 years old.

Another major aspect of our modern lives, telecommunication, saw major innovations thanks to Shirley Jackson – not the writer, the theoretical physicist. After a career as a postdoctoral researcher, lecturer and visiting scientist for international and American research centers, Jackson joined a research team at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Her scientific breakthroughs would change the office world forever as she would conduct research that led to the invention of the touch tone telephone, portable faxes, solar cells, fiber optic cables and the technology behind caller identification and call waiting. What would the ’80s and ’90s be without that? Jackson was the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate at MIT and the second African-American woman to earn a doctorate in physics in the U.S.

These are just a few of all the women who contributed to the STEM field throughout United States history, with many more to learn about during Women’s History Month.