Women’s ingenuity has seen significant inventions from Wi-Fi through to windscreen wipers and here is a list of eleven.
Even in 2024, women are hugely underrepresented in senior positions in the business world. And new research has even found that teenage girls are 10 times more likely than boys their age to think their gender will put them at a disadvantage in becoming a boss.
A survey, commissioned by the National Women’s Enterprise Week (NWEW) in partnership with Sapio Research, polled 500 teens aged between 14-18 – and found that before they’ve even started out in their careers, girls perceive barriers for themselves in the workplace.
This is despite the fact more than three-quarters (76%) said they’d like to start their own business, and 64% see themselves in a leadership position in the future. And here on International Women’s Day are eleven ways to show that the history of women inventors is just as long as that as men. In some cases the inventions are clearly known but people had no idea who first made it.
Hedy Lamarr was both an actress and an incredible innnovator (Getty Images)
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (U.S. Department of Defense)1. Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth - Hedy Lamarr
While Hedy Lamarr is known as a film actress she was also skilled in the area of innovation and making things. With the start of WW2 she wanted to help out and she developed “frequency hopping” technology to guide missiles which paved the way for wireless communication technology such as Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth.
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2. Windshield Wipers - Mary Anderson
Mary Anderson was caught in a traffic jam in New York when she came up with the idea of windscreen wipers in 1902. Her driver had to move the snow with his hands and so she sketched the design for an automated system.
3. Home Security Systems - Marie Van Brittan Brown
Due to break-ins in her Queens neighbourhood in the US, Marie Van Brittan Brown invented a video and audio security system in 1966 which laid the foundation for those that are in place today.
4. Kevlar - Stephanie Kwolek
A chemist by profession Stephanie Kwolek discovered the strength of some molecular chains at low temperature leading to the making of the bulletproof Kevlar material.
Mary Anderson (Getty Images)5. Telecommunications Devices - Shirley Ann Jackson
Breakthroughs in telecommunications were made by Shirley Ann Jackson in the 1970s which led to inventions like fibre optic cables.
6. Aquariums - Jeanne Villepreux-Power
Villepreux-Power created the first glass aquarium in 1832 to find out where paper nautiluses got their shells.
7. Treatments for Malaria - Asima Chatterjee
Asima Chatterjee’s interest was in medicinal plants and chemistry. She discovered how to extract and research chemicals that made plants curative and these drugs are used in the treatment of conditions like malaria today.
Marie Van Brittan Brown8. Automatic Dishwashers - Josephine Cochrane
The first automated dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane who used water pressure for her design and later opened a production factory that later became KitchenAid.
9. Computer Programming - Grace Hopper
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was a computer operator for the US Navy and went on to develop the world’s first compiler that translates code and makes programming for multiple computers possible.
10. Coffee Filters - Melitta Bentz
Fed up with grounded coffee in her cup she took blotting paper from her son’s writing book and this became the first filter. She got a patent for it in 1908.
11. Space Station Power System - Olga González-Sanabria
Olga González-Sanabria who began working for NASA in 1979 is best known for inventing long-life nickel hydrogen batteries which can operate for over 15 years. Due to their energy density and lifespan they are used on the International Space Station.
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