Inventors to REMEMBER
Michèle finds some clever women we should know
If you end up in hospital, you have American nurse Letitia Geer to thank for inventing the syringe
We should know the names of people who have brought us brilliant things. I was pondering this recently as I devoured a family-sized bag of chocolatecoated almonds while my family wasn’t looking.
What a perfect combination of flavours and textures that is – I really would like to know who to thank for putting chocolate and nuts together. After all, I’ve heard of Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk, and they’ve brought me much less joy than even a single scorched almond. Seems a shame their names are filed away in my head while the creator of the chocolate-nut combo remains unknown. It may be impossible to pinpoint the exact moment someone thought, “Chocolate is great, but could we make it even greater? Or is that nuts? Ooh, wait!”
A bit of tootling on the internet reveals the first mention in print of chocolatecovered almonds appears to be in 1742 in The Compleat Housewife, a recipe book written by Eliza Smith. I therefore offer Eliza my “compleat” gratitude for her role in popularising this delectation.
There are many women who deserve to be feted for their fabulous inventions and creations – some, if you can believe it, even more important than the chocolate-covered nut.
A whole raft of women, starting with the inventor of the actual life raft, Maria E. Beasley. While some bloke in the 1870s thought of putting little boats on big boats in case something went wrong with the latter, it was Mrs Beasley who designed and patented a raft a decade later that had guardrails to keep people inside, which is pretty much the whole point. In the 1870s, Anna Connelly was sorting another emergency when she designed and patented the external fire escape. And we can credit Marie Van Brittan Brown for further safety inventions – Marie patented the first home security system in 1969, featuring closed-circuit TV cameras and an intercom that allowed you to talk to anyone at your front door. Women have also been at the forefront of driving safety and comfort on the roads. In 1893, Margaret A. Wilcox, an engineer in Chicago, invented the car heater using heat from the engine to warm the inside. Then in 1903, Mary Anderson dreamt up windscreen wipers after she noticed drivers sticking their heads out car windows to see in the rain. We have a woman to thank for inventing Kevlar, the synthetic fibre used in bulletproof vests – that was chemist Stephanie Kwolek in 1965. And if you still end up in hospital, you have American nurse Letitia Geer to thank for inventing the syringe in 1896. And possibly because women are never quite as warm as we would like to be, in the 1940s Dr Mária Telkes invented and patented the use of solar heating in a residential situation. Dr Telkes was also a psychiatrist – just another example of women nailing the multitasking. Famously, we can also offer our thanks to mathematician Ada Lovelace, whose work at the University of London in 1842 on the “analytical engine” involved writing the first-ever computer algorithm. I extend my warm gratitude to Margaret Knight who, back in 1868, invented a machine that makes flatbottomed paper bags. Think about that next time you’re packing your groceries and they don’t fall over. Especially if they contain a box or two of chocolate-covered nuts.