Centres

SET Women - Leicestershire Women in Science Engineering & Technology

e-Book - Inventions made by women

You may not have know this, but scarcely a day goes by that you don't use a technological or scientific innovation made by a woman - it's just that the history books have written out this little fact and attributed them to men instead, often at the bequest of the woman herself.

For example, that soothing bath tonight will require an electric water heater, technology invented by Ida Forbes in 1917. The cold milk you added to your morning wake-up cuppa was stored in your refrigerator, an invention made practical in part by Florence Parpart in 1914. And it is possible that you put your used mug in a dishwasher, an 1886 invention of Josephine Cochran. But that's just inside the house...

The motor vehicle that brings you to work or school requires a muffler, a 1917 invention of the outspoken and chain-smoking Miss El Dorado Jones. And if it is cold and raining, a likely event in the UK, you can thank Margaret Wilcox for the heating and Mary Anderson for those handy windshield wipers.

Many people owe their lives to enterprising clever women in SET. In 1966, the chemist Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar, a fibre that provides the strength for bullet-proof vests, spacesuits, radial tyres and crash helmets. In 1899, Letitia Geer designed and patented a medical syringe, and chemist Gertrude Elion's work on medicine development led to the AIDS-fighting drug AZT.

Even now, SET women of all ages and from all educational backgrounds are designing everything from robotic vacuum cleaners to Smart Bras. Using your technical knowledge and your common sense, you too can be one of the women helping to design the future!