Beulah Louise Henry
Beulah Henry has condescendinly been called "the lady Edison." Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1887 she held patents for over a hundred inventions. Her first, a vacuum ice cream freezer, was patented in 1912. Her inventions ranged from copy machines that could reproduce four typewritte copies of a document at a time, to toys. She received a patent in 1940 for a bobbin-free sewing machine. Between 1932-64, she received eleven patents relating to imrpovements of the typewrite. these included devices for feeding and aligninng paper, and attachments for duplicating documents--long before the era of photocopying. In 1937, Henry solved the problem of how to have cash registers write like typewriters for the National Cash Register Company.
Athena Greek Goddess of Mechanical Skills
References:
Women Invent: Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped Our World by Susan Casey (Chicago Review Press, 1997) p.46-47
Mothers and Daughters of Invention by Autumn Stanley (Rutgers University Press, 1995) pp.351-2,366-7,417, 420-26.
Web Sites:
Beulah HenryProlific Female Inventors of the Industrial Era
Beulah Henry
OTHER INNOVATIONS AND INVENTIONS
