Beulah Louise HenryBeulah 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 |