Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/926

Rh the century, is one of the signal triumphs of modern civilization. But women's rapid advance in these lines of progress has been splendidly supplemented by the parallel advance of the woman inventor. That queer turn for original, utilitarian mental progress has probably always been woman's capability as well as man's, but woman's recognition in this field was slow to come.

For years many of woman's inventions were patented under men's names, and although the first patent to a woman was issued as far back as 1809, to Mary Kies for straw weaving with silk or thread, it was not until the great Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia in 1876, when articles ranging from a dish washer to a mowing machine were exhibited among women's inventions, that there came a realization, not only of women's ability to invent, but woman's right to hold patents in her own name. As early as the sixties the largest foundry in the city of Troy was run to manufacture horseshoes, turning them out one every three seconds, and while the machine which did this work was invented by a woman the manufactory was carried on under a man's name. The best improvement upon Doctor Franklin's discovery of an iron-lined fire-place, for purposes of heating, was a stove invented by a woman, but the patent was taken out in a man's name. Another woman invented the attachment to the mowing machine whereby the knives are thrown out of gear whenever the driver leaves his seat, thus lessening the liability to accident. But though this feature is embodied in the later mammoth machines, she received no credit, the patent not being taken out in her name. The first large establishment in this country for the manufacture of buttons, the Williston's, was due to a woman, though it was run under a man's name.

The inventor of the seamless bag was Miss Lucy Johnson, who died near Providence, Rhode Island, August 22, 1867, aged seventy-eight. It was in 1824 that "she wove seven pairs