Feminine Ingenuity How Women Inventors Changed America [Paperback]

"Written with clarity and a lively eye both for detail and for the progress of feminism in the United States."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
In this fascinating study of American women inventors, historian Anne Macdonald shows how creative, resourceful, and entrepreneurial women helped to shatter the ancient stereotypes of mechanically inept womanhood. In presenting their stories, Anne Macdonald's thorough research in patent archives and her engaging use of period magazine, journals, lectures, records from major fairs and expositions, and interviews, have made her book nothing less than an overall history of the women's movement in America.Anne L. Macdonald was for fifteen years chairperson of the history department of the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C. She was the author of No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting and Feminine Ingenuity: Women and Invention in America. She died in 2016.INTRODUCTION
 
Whenever I talk about having written a book on American women inventors, someone always pipes up, “Well, what did women invent? Anything really important?” Though I console myself that no one seriously questions women’s ability to invent, I can count on one hand those who know the name of even one American woman who actually did. When I explain that I have narrowed my subject to women who actually received patents for their inventions, my audience is further nonplussed. “Is this a very recent development, women getting patents?” asked one. A friend who has practiced patent law for four decades said he has never represented a female inventor. Others ask me to name a few patentees, and I am tempted to roll out the big names, whether their inventions broke important ground or not. A trio of actresses might do: Take Hedy Lamar, whose patent was for a secret wartime communications system; or May Robson, who invented a false leg for stage use; orl�.