Inventors light the way for humankind

Everyone knows that Thomas Alva Edison, who lived from 1847-1931, was the “quintessential American inventor.” He held 1,093 U.S. patents and was known as “the Wizard of Menlo Park,” a reference to the name of his research laboratory in Edison Township, N.J. 

Edison and his research team members, whom he fondly termed “muckers,” invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera and early versions of the electric light bulb.

 Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and “nobody would have thought he was destined for greatness,” commented U.S. Sen. Bob Portman of Ohio. “He was the nearly deaf son of a shingle maker and a schoolteacher.” 

“Edison tried a number of different materials for his light bulb before finding one that worked. He said: ‘I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’”

Mina Miller and Thomas Edison were married in 1886.

Sen. Portman wrote: “One estimate in the 1920s – while he was still living – stated that Edison’s inventions had already created more than 1 million jobs.” 

“His method for coming up with these new ideas for inventions was simple: ‘I find out what the world needs, and then I go ahead and try to invent it.’” 

An inventor who came along 40 years after Edison shared that attitude…from the female perspective. She was Beulah Louise Henry of Raleigh, who lived from 1887-1973.

Beulah Louise Henry  

She was dubbed by the news media as “Lady Edison” in the 1930s, racking up about 110 inventions and 49 patents. 

Ann McCrackin, a patent attorney in Minneapolis, Minn., acknowledged that Beulah Henry may have been the darling of early female inventors, but there are at least four other “Lady Edisons” in her mind.

Ann McCrackin

 

One was Margaret “Mattie” Eloise Knight of York, Maine, who lived from 1838-1914. She and her two brothers were raised in Manchester, N.H., by her widowed mother. They all worked at a cotton textile mill in town. 

In an interview with the Woman’s Journal in 1872, Knight recalled her unconventional youth: 

“As a child, I never cared for things that girls usually do; dolls never possessed any charms for me. The only things I wanted were a jack-knife, a gimlet and pieces of wood. I was always making things for my brothers; did they want anything in the line of playthings, they always said: ‘Mattie will make them for us.’ I was famous for my kites; and my sleds were the envy and admiration of all the boys in town.”

 

Margaret Knight took a job at Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, Mass., in 1867, and observed that the envelope-style bags were weak and narrow. Surely, she could mechanize the process to make sturdy, flat-bottomed paper bags. 

She applied for a patent in 1871 and learned that her idea had been stolen by a Boston foundry worker named Charles Annan, who had already been granted a patent for the machine. 

Knight was the first woman to suffer patent infringement. She filed a patent interference suit. In the trial, Annan argued that Knight could not have been the inventor. As a woman, she “could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine,” he asserted. 

But Knight had full documentation, with drawings, paper patterns, diary entries, photographs, models, completed bags...and character witnesses. The truth was on her side. 

After 16 long days of testimony, the Commissioner of Patents was convinced that she should be granted the patent. On July 11, 1871, she was awarded Patent No. 116,842 for her Paper Bag Machine. 

It was the first of 89 patents in her illustrious career.