The 20th century was a period full of discoveries and inventions, even by the female world. A necessity, an intuition, a flash of genius to resolve, for example, the smallest daily inconveniences: it is often from here that the inventions conceived and developed by women who have managed to positively change the world with their vision were born. Let's look at four of these innovations, still relevant today.
Mary Anderson's first windshield wipers
(Greene County, 1866 - Monteagle, 1953)
New York, 1903. Cars and trams move through the streets, but at that moment it is snowing, and the drivers stretch their arms out of the open windows to clean the front glass so they can see the road despite the snow. At this moment, Mary Anderson surveys the scene and has an intuition: a way to clean the windshield without having to stick your arms out, the windshield wiper. The project was very simple, an iron rod supporting a rubber sheath was made to oscillate, in contact with the glass, using a crank operated manually by the driver from inside the vehicles. Unfortunately, Mary Anderson not only had to insist on obtaining a patent for her design, but when she tried to sell it in 1905 she was unsuccessful as it was felt that an object designed by a woman did not deserve to be paid for. The patent lapsed in 1920 without being renewed, but Anderson's brilliant idea remained, and in 1922 it was Cadillac that fitted her invention as on vehicles, later becoming an indispensable accessory for every vehicle.
The “Dish Washing Machine” by Josephine Cochrane
(County of Ashtabula, 1839-1913)
"If no one else invents a dishwashing machine, I will do it myself" is the famous phrase that Josephine Cochrane uttered when she got bored of the boring household task and decided to create a machine that could do it for her. She filed the first patent for the invention in 1885: a machine made up of custom-made compartments for dishes, placed in a wheel that lay inside a copper boiler, with a motor that allowed it to rotate while hot, soapy water squirted from the bottom of the boiler raining on the dishes. The following year her prototype came to life, also thanks to the help of a mechanic, George Butters, obtaining the patent for his "Dish Washing Machine". From there the Garis-Cochrane Company entered into business, mainly thanks to the visibility gained with the presentation of the invention at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. The company continued with great success, until being acquired by Kitchen Aid and later by Whirlpool. In 2006 Josephine Cochrane was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, as a testament to the great impact her creation had.
Katherine Johnson and the trajectory of Apollo 11
(White Sulphur Springs, 26th August 1918 - Hampton, 24th February 2020)
It was a computer, "when computers wore skirts": Katherine Johnson was a mathematical researcher for NASA. Having graduated in mathematics and French at just 18 years old, Johnson began working for the American government agency in 1953 in a group of female technicians tasked with carrying out complex mathematical calculations, but only after two weeks she began working alongside engineers to calculate the first Alan Shepard's flight in 1961, the first astronaut to fly in space. “The initial trajectory was a parabola, and it was easy to predict where it would be at any time,” says Johnson. “Originally, when they said they wanted the capsule to descend at a certain point, they were trying to calculate when it should start. I said: ‘Let me do it. Tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll work it out backwards and tell you when to take off.' This was my forte." Later, when NASA started using computers, she was the one who checked that the calculations were correct, and this also happened for the trajectory of Apollo 11.
Hedy Lamarr and the frequency hopping underlying wireless communication
(Vienna, 1914 - Casselberry US, 2000)
Hedy Lamarr, famous more for her career as an actress than as an inventor, attempted to contribute to the defeat of the Germans with an ingenious invention. At 16 she began her acting career and, after her divorce from her husband, she was forced to abandon Austria to move first to London and then to the United States, where in 1938 she began working for Metro Goldwyn Mayer. In the summer of 1940, during his life in Hollywood, Lamarr met her friend and pianist George Antheil at a party: two people with a passion for science and the hope of doing something important. German interceptions during the war were constant on the frequencies with which the Allied ships communicated with each other, soon becoming - obviously - a threat to be eliminated. Hedy's idea was simple: continuously change frequencies for both ships and missiles in a synchronized way, making it impossible for the enemy to locate and block them. Thanks to her friend's help, the communication system was developed using two reels that start at the same time and spin at the same speed. The ship and the torpedo could thus secretly communicate according to the same system of 88 different frequencies, codified like a musical score. In this way the frequency-hopping was born whose patent was approved in 1942 and used in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Although Hedy Lamarr was continually seen only as a movie star, today she is recognized among the pioneers of modern technology thanks to her invention.
