Technikatörténeti szemle 15. (1985)

TANULMÁNYOK - Amram, M. Fred: Women’s contributions to the history of technology

to a resident of the colonies was British Patent 401 to Thomas Masters of Pennsylvania in 1715. It was identified as „A new invention found out by Sybilla, his wife, for cleaning and curing the Indian corn growing in the several colonies in America." While Mrs. Masters was in England acquiring her patent, Thomas built a mill in Philadelphia incorporating Sybilla's invention. It is also noteworthy that the second patent granted to a colonist was British Patent 403 also granted to Sybilla Masters for „Working and Staining Straw for Hats, Bonnets, Etc." Currently about 1,200 patents are awarded each week by the U.S. Patent Office. Approximately 20 (1,7%) include the name of a woman. Since 1790 roughly four and one half million patents have been granted by the United States and approximately 60,000 of those include the name of a woman. During the first 102 years of the U.S. Patent Office (1790 to 1892) 439 patents were granted and 3,225 of those (.7 of 1%) included a woman's name. In 1954 a Senate Committee, based on sampling techniques, reported that about 1.5% of patents granted that year were awarded to women and that, on average, women's patents were earning higher royalties! (2) We move now to a definition of technology and an effort to show relationships between technology, inventions, and a history of women as inventors. Unfortunately not all our examples are women because so little is known about female inventors. We hope that our next report and each succeeding report will rely less on male examples. Human work, as well as play, usually involves more than that which is naturally created. Technology is that which humans interpose between themselves and the natural world in order to change the natural world or their relationship with it. Note that the emphasis is on change rather than observation and cataloguing. Technology usually attempts to enhance human efficiency in terms of strength (e. g., pulley), senses (e. g., telescope, warm clothing), intelligence (e. g., abacus, computers, radio), time (e. g., microwave oven, electric typewriter), etc. An extremely important concept, which helps to explain the history of invention, is that technological change is incremental. The ocndenser came before an effective steam engine and the vacuum preceded an effective incandescent light bulb. The eraser at the end of a pencil presupposes a pencil. A light and efficient internal combustion engine preceded the Wright brothers efforts at flying. If technological change is incremental, then every change, whether major leap or minor modification, presupposes a certain level of knowledge. The inventor must have some knowledge of science and, perhaps more important, knowledge of prior technology. For example, the inventor might have need for knowledge about materials (e. g., elasticy, strength). Hence one could begin to explain the relatively small number of patents granted to women by exploring women's access to education, and even more specifically to the applied seciences such as engineering. Given this perspective one marvels that so many technological advances were made by women. The difficulty of assigning credit becomes issue in creating a chronology of technological change. Who, for example, should receive credit for the wireless radio; the Russian Popov, the Italian Marconi, or the German Hertz. Singer and Howe are generally credited with inventing the sewing machine but the 26 patents awarded to Helen Blanchard certainly included major innovations, such