Women Inventors You Likely Did Not Know About
A celebratory catalogue of transformative inventions created by women—from the dishwasher to Kevlar to Monopoly—many of whom were denied patents, proper credit, or financial reward for their work. The post honors both the named innovators and the countless unnamed women whose contributions were erased by discriminatory laws and systems.
Hello guys. I thought to share a list of inventions commonly used around the world, thanks to women.
Of course the list is inexhaustible. And an equal shout out to the women who, due to certain discriminatory laws, were denied patents and sometimes the credit of their inventions were given to men.
We love you. Though we may not know your names, you have our utmost respect. Thank you for what you did.
DISHWASHER
Patented in 1886, the first dishwasher combined high water pressure, a wheel, a boiler, and a wire rack like the ones still used for dish drying. Inventor Josephine Cochrane never used it herself, but it made life easier for her servants.
THE FOOT-PEDAL TRASH CAN
For those of us with "I will not bend down syndrome" Lillian Gilbreth is our saviour. But that's not all she was capable of. She was also responsible for a series of inventions which further improved existing inventions with small, but ingenious, tweaks. In the early 1900s, she designed the shelves inside refrigerator doors, made the can opener easier to use, and tidied up cleaning with a foot pedal trash can. Gilbreth is most famous for her pioneering work in efficiency management and ergonomics with her husband, Frank. Two of their 12 children, Frank Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth, humorously wrote about their home/work collaborations in the book 'Cheaper by the Dozen'.
KEVLAR - Also known as a Bulletproof vest.
Lightweight, high-tensile Kevlar—five times stronger than steel—will take a bullet for you. DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek accidentally invented it while trying to perfect a lighter fiber for car tires and earned a patent in 1966.
LIQUID PAPER
Remember that white pen you use to erase a mistake from pen ink? That's a woman's work. In the days before the delete key, secretary Bette Nesmith Graham secretly used white tempera paint to cover up her typing errors. She spent years perfecting the formula in her kitchen before patenting Liquid Paper in 1958. Gillette bought her company in 1979 for $47.5 million. And that's no typo.
THE PAPER BAG
America got a brand new paper bag when cotton mill worker Margaret Knight invented a machine to make them with a flat square bottom in 1868. (Paper bags originally looked more like envelopes.) A man named Charles Annan saw her design and tried to patent the idea first. Knight filed a lawsuit and won the patent fair and square in 1871.
WINDSHIELD WIPERS
Yes, yes!! When next it's raining and you activate your windshield wiper and watch it go back and forth clearing the rain from your shield, observe a moment of silence for Mary Anderson and Charlotte Bridgwood. Drivers were skeptical when Mary Anderson invented the first manual windshield wipers in 1903.
They thought it was safer to drive with rain and snow obscuring the road than to pull a lever to clear it. (Another woman inventor, Charlotte Bridgwood, invented an automatic version with an electric roller in 1917. It didn't take off, either.) But by the time Anderson's patent expired in 1920, windshield wipers were cleaning up. Cadillac was the first to include them in every car model, and other companies soon followed.
DISPOSABLE DIAPERS
Napkins were a nightmare to me growing up. The mere thought of touching poop and the whole process of cleaning a napkin was nauseating. Diapers have become a thing in recent times thanks to Marion Donovan.
Marion Donovan didn't take all the mess out of diaper changing when she patented the waterproof "Boater" in 1951. But she changed parenting—and well, babies—forever. The waterproof diaper cover, originally made with a shower curtain, was first sold at Saks Fifth Avenue. Donovan sold the patent to the Keko Corporation for $1 million and then created an entirely disposable model a few years later. Pampers was born in 1961.
MONOPOLY
Elizabeth Magie created The Landlord's Game to spread the economic theory of Georgism—teaching players about the unfairness of land-grabbing, the disadvantages of renting, and the need for a single land value tax on owners. Fun stuff! Magie patented the board game in 1904 and self-published it in 1906.
Nearly 30 years later, a man named Charles Darrow rejiggered the board design and message and sold it to Parker Brothers as Monopoly. The company bought Magie's patent for the original game for $500 and no royalties.
ELECTRIC REFRIGERATOR/ ELECTRIC HOT WATER HEATER
Florence Parpart in a time when people were still using ice-boxes, patented an electric refrigerator that she successfully marketed and improved upon for years. Remember her when next you open that refrigerator door.
Ida Forbes 1917. Not much is known about Ida Forbes besides that she patented the first electric hot water heater in a time when most hot water heaters ran on gas. We see you sis. Well done sis.
IMMUNOSUPPRESSIVE DRUGS
Gertrude Belle Elion succeeded in 1957 as the first to invent immunosuppressive drug. During her long career as a pharmacologist, Elion helped develop countless drugs that are used in the treatment of AIDS, malaria, herpes, and cancer. Along with George Herbert Hitchings, she invented the first immunosuppressive drug, Azathioprine, which was initially used for chemotherapy patients, and eventually for organ transplants.
THE CIRCULAR SAW
A weaver named Tabitha Babbitt was the first to suggest that lumber workers use a circular saw instead of the two-man pit saw that only cut when pulled forward. She made a prototype and attached it to her spinning wheel in 1813. Babbitt's Shaker community didn't approve of filing a patent, but they took full advantage of the invention.
Cheers to women who defiled the odds in the past, are currently defiling the odds, and will defile the odds in future.
- Compiled by Cameroon Pepper
Published in April 2021, this piece emerges from a period of growing global conversation about gender equity in science, technology, and intellectual property—conversations accelerated by social media and public discourse around historical injustice. In Cameroon and across Africa, such recognition of women's ingenuity carries particular weight in societies where women's economic and intellectual contributions are often undervalued or rendered invisible.
The post serves a vital archival and consciousness-raising function: it makes visible what dominant histories have obscured, and it does so without rancor or didacticism. Read now, it remains urgent because the structures that denied women patents, credit, and payment in the past have not disappeared; the list demonstrates that innovation itself is genderless, but access to recognition and reward is not. Its calm, matter-of-fact tone—'We love you. Though we may not know your names'—models a way of speaking about historical injustice that is dignified rather than performative.