Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just gonna play
Speaker 2: a rousing version of Yankee to do Old Landy or
Speaker 2: something like that in the background of this stirring episode.
Speaker 1: You got a.
Speaker 2: Picklo, No, I'm just gonna go like this. I'll record
Speaker 2: a track of do Do Do Do Do Do Do
Speaker 2: Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do
Speaker 2: Do Do Do and we'll play that on a loop
Speaker 2: underneath us talking. Jerry said she can do it with editning.
Speaker 1: I'm sure this would be an all time great Okay.
Speaker 2: The reason I want to do that is because as
Speaker 2: I was reading this, I was what's the word I'm
Speaker 2: looking for? I'm toying with enthused. That's not it. That
Speaker 2: sounds like the opposite of how I feel. It is inspiring,
Speaker 2: but also like, it's just cool that there's this un Well,
Speaker 2: in a way, it's not cool. It's cool to discover
Speaker 2: this whole group, this whole cadre of inventors that just
Speaker 2: are overlooked. That's the uncool part. They've been overlooked. For
Speaker 2: so long. But there's a bunch of women inventors here
Speaker 2: in America and around the world presumably, but we're just
Speaker 2: talking about American ones today that really made some amazing contributions,
Speaker 2: and especially at first for the first significant amount of time,
Speaker 2: they really had an uphill battle to get their invention
Speaker 2: like out there because of just how generally mistreated women were.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, here's a fairly horrifying stat because it was
Speaker 1: not that long ago, but in the late twentieth century,
Speaker 1: only about ten percent of all patents were awarded to
Speaker 1: women and their inventions. And we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: some of the reasons before we get going on highlighting
Speaker 1: some of these great inventions and some of these great women.
Speaker 1: But one reason is just a lot of times, if
Speaker 1: you were a woman and you had an invention, you
Speaker 1: had to file it at least the patent under your
Speaker 1: husband's name, or your brother's or your father's name, or
Speaker 1: any man in your life that was willing to sign
Speaker 1: on the dotted line saying yeah, that's my idea, because
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't grant intellectual property or a patent
Speaker 1: to my sister or wife or daughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, remember in the Widow's episode we talked about coverture,
Speaker 2: which was a woman was either essentially an extension of
Speaker 2: her father while she lived with her parents or her
Speaker 2: husband after she got married and could not she had
Speaker 2: no property rights. If you have no property rights, you
Speaker 2: can't own intellectual property, and therefore you can't have a
Speaker 2: patent on anything, because that, by definition gives you intellectual property.
Speaker 2: And that was a huge deal for a while. In
Speaker 2: addition to that, because women were just generally treated, they
Speaker 2: also didn't have access to schooling or education, especially technical
Speaker 2: education that would kind of help those who were already
Speaker 2: inventive by nature to actually like blossom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what an incentive is there too? If you
Speaker 1: know that you can't get a patent for something, it's
Speaker 1: gonna dull your inspiration to go out and try and
Speaker 1: invent something to begin with, because what's the point. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: there's a point to inventing things because you might make
Speaker 1: the world better, But I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: drive for invention is also to do with like money,
Speaker 1: having something in your name and making money on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, But yeah, having something in your name
Speaker 2: I think is a more sentimental way to put it,
Speaker 2: for sure, But it does deter it, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: that was part of the whole thing. I mean, at
Speaker 2: the very least, women weren't seen as a group that needed,
Speaker 2: that should be encouraged to pursue these kind of things,
Speaker 2: if not actively discouraged, and some women face that. There
Speaker 2: was actually I didn't know about this, but at the
Speaker 2: Seneca Falls convey and then the suffrage movement that followed,
Speaker 2: there were a couple of competing groups that were like,
Speaker 2: we really need to put all of our time and
Speaker 2: effort behind suffrage, like giving women the right to vote.
Speaker 2: That needs to be our focus. We need to say,
Speaker 2: laser focus on that, because that's important. That's the one
Speaker 2: you think of when you think of the women's rights
Speaker 2: movement of the nineteenth century. But there's a other group
Speaker 2: economic feminists that were like, hey, you can have all
Speaker 2: the voting rights you want in the world, but if
Speaker 2: you don't have any means of being self sufficient, if
Speaker 2: you need to be it, it doesn't add up to
Speaker 2: a hill of beans. I think that was their slogan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a woman named Charlotte Smith who, like
Speaker 1: you said, she was like, you know, if we want
Speaker 1: to make real advances, then how about and she eventually
Speaker 1: came to the invention part of it, but how about
Speaker 1: property rights and intellectual property rights? And then starting in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy five, she really focused in on inventors and
Speaker 1: invention and getting patents and getting the patent Office to
Speaker 1: just simply recognize the fact that women were starting to
Speaker 1: get patents. Was took nine years. It was in I
Speaker 1: believe eighteen seventy nine she moved to DC started hassling
Speaker 1: the Patent Office to say, hey, here's all I want.
Speaker 1: Just give me a list of women inventors period. I
Speaker 1: think it could inspire other women. We could publish it.
Speaker 1: So if you could just put together that list, you
Speaker 1: got the list, put it together for me, and they
Speaker 1: said sure. Nine years later they came back with women
Speaker 1: as well. I think she packaged it, but women inventors
Speaker 1: to whom patents have been granted, And in eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight she published it five hundred copies worth, and that
Speaker 1: I'm sure was a big game changer as far as like, hey,
Speaker 1: look it's happening, it's possible, you can do it.
Speaker 2: Yes, And while that did kind of open up the
Speaker 2: floodgates two women inventors seeing like I can do this,
Speaker 2: there is like a path for me here to take
Speaker 2: toward inventing. There were women who did have patents in
Speaker 2: their name prior to this. It was just extremely rare.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, well there were how many were there?
Speaker 1: Did it? I thought there was a list here?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, the only one that I've come across. I
Speaker 2: never saw the list of women inventors to whom patents
Speaker 2: have been granted, but I did see one. I think
Speaker 2: the first American woman to earn a patent in her
Speaker 2: name was named Mary Dixon keys Ki Ees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was the first one about ninety years earlier.
Speaker 1: But it supposedly took four clerks ten days to put
Speaker 1: this list together, So you know, it was a great
Speaker 1: thing that Charlotte Smith did. She had a vision that
Speaker 1: this could be a game changer, and it seems like
Speaker 1: it probably was.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was like, you can't hide the truth any
Speaker 2: longer with your Walrus mustaches and your arm guarters. Give
Speaker 2: me that list, and they did.
Speaker 1: So should we highlight some of these? These are pretty great?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: All right, Well let's take a break after this first one,
Speaker 1: maybe because I want I'm eager to talk about Marie
Speaker 1: Van Britton Brown. She was awesome. She was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, an
Speaker 1: African American woman who worked as a nurse and oftentimes
Speaker 1: was working you know, late night shifts, coming and going
Speaker 1: at odd hours. Her husband, Albert Brown, was an electronics technician.
Speaker 1: He had odd hours of work too, So how that
Speaker 1: shakes out is a lot of times Marie van Britton
Speaker 1: Brown would be at home or come home late at night,
Speaker 1: be a little worried, and you know, what was a
Speaker 1: rough neighborhood at the time as to who may become
Speaker 1: a knocking on her door. So she invented along with
Speaker 1: her husband's help, but it ended up being kind of
Speaker 1: the first closed circuit TV system and home security system
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It was a bunch of different
Speaker 2: systems that they put together to create this one complete
Speaker 2: system pretty much out of the box. It was like
Speaker 2: a complete security system. But they really had to work
Speaker 2: with a lack of technology at the time, Like there
Speaker 2: was no way to pan the video camera that the
Speaker 2: whole thing was based on. So instead they had four
Speaker 2: separate peopoles and you could raise or lower the camera
Speaker 2: to the correct peopole depending on the height of the
Speaker 2: person on the other side.
Speaker 1: I find that ingenius, great idea, I said, CCTV. So
Speaker 1: there were television monitors. This camera fed into these monitors.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that you didn't actually have to
Speaker 1: go to the door. And even looking through a peepole
Speaker 1: can be dangerous if someone knows you're just on the
Speaker 1: other side of the door at that people, they can
Speaker 1: get you.
Speaker 2: That's what it saysn't the patent application, that's what it said.
Speaker 1: So she had to a remote control that would let
Speaker 1: her unlock the door from a distance away, and an
Speaker 1: emergency button a distance away that would alert the police
Speaker 1: or security in the apartment building. You had these four
Speaker 1: peep holes, this sliding camera, and two way microphones, so
Speaker 1: she could actually say, like who's you know, basically what
Speaker 1: we have now with like ring doorbells and nest doorbells. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she thought of this idea and her husband helped her
Speaker 1: pull it off in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the idea of just how ubiquitous this has become.
Speaker 2: This is like such a commonplace everyday thing now is
Speaker 2: kind of a testament to what she invented because at
Speaker 2: the time This was completely revolutionary. There was nothing like
Speaker 2: this at the time, and she and her husband just
Speaker 2: invented it from whole cloth. And I think they got
Speaker 2: patent number three million, four hundred and eighty two thousand
Speaker 2: and thirty seven. That was the US patent for their
Speaker 2: closed circuit television security system.
Speaker 1: That's right. She also got an award from the National
Speaker 1: Scientist Committee. She was recognized in The Times, the paper
Speaker 1: of record. Sadly she passed away in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy six. But it was such
Speaker 1: a good idea that thirty two subsequent patent applications referenced
Speaker 1: her original invention and their patent application. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: great idea.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, you want to take that break, now, let's
Speaker 2: do it. Okay, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And in things.
Speaker 2: Job in job, okay, chuck. So up next, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about a woman named Josephine Cochrane who kind
Speaker 2: of bucked the trend of inventors and was a wealthy
Speaker 2: socialite and supposedly the origin of her invention, the dishwasher,
Speaker 2: the first actual useful dishwasher, came from dismay that her
Speaker 2: servants washing her fine china that had been in her
Speaker 2: family since the seventeenth century, that it was getting chipped,
Speaker 2: and so at first she's like, give me that, I'll
Speaker 2: do this, And then she was like, oh, doing the
Speaker 2: dishes really sucks. There's got to be a better way.
Speaker 2: And she put it off to the side for a while.
Speaker 2: But then her husband died and left her and her
Speaker 2: family in debt, and she decided to bring that idea
Speaker 2: off of the shelf and invent her way out of debt.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what she did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, you mentioned this was the first sort
Speaker 1: of really practical usable dishwasher. There had been other attempts,
Speaker 1: but you know, there litle clunky literally clunky. They were
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where like you turn a crank
Speaker 1: on the side and the dishes are jumbling around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they would break and chip. And she was like, well, listen,
Speaker 1: this is my original problem is that I have chip
Speaker 1: dishes here, So why don't we do something mechanical that
Speaker 1: you don't crank and move those dishes around. She very smartly,
Speaker 1: at least for her, because she was making something for herself.
Speaker 1: She measured her dishes and made sure that each compartment
Speaker 1: fit the dishes very well and stayed in place. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know that she had the idea
Speaker 1: that this is going to be a big mass marketed product.
Speaker 1: Yet she's just trying to solve her problem. And she
Speaker 1: had a motor powered wheel above a boiler spring soapy
Speaker 1: water on dishes and got it patent on December twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: Yes, kids, you just imagine the person who came over
Speaker 2: that hand crank dishwasher demonstrating it, and you can just
Speaker 2: hear all the dish yeah, breaking inside, frank in it.
Speaker 2: They're like, I'm sure they're fine in there. This is
Speaker 2: what it sounds like when they're being washed.
Speaker 1: It rarely happens that way.
Speaker 2: So the eighteen ninety three World's Fair in Chicago, the
Speaker 2: White City where the Devil in the White City is set,
Speaker 2: that was a huge kind of like introduction of women
Speaker 2: inventors in the United States to the world, and Josephine
Speaker 2: Cochrane was one of them. She debuted her dishwasher at
Speaker 2: the eighteen ninety three World's Fair and actually won a
Speaker 2: World's Fair award. So I abbreviated this and I don't
Speaker 2: remember exactly how it goes. But it has to do
Speaker 2: with mechanical construction, durability and adapted to its line of work.
Speaker 2: Oh great, so she knocked out all four of those boxes. Or,
Speaker 2: to put briefly, best mech construct durable and adapt to
Speaker 2: its line of work.
Speaker 1: End quote looks strange on a trophy. Hey, she earned it.
Speaker 1: She earned it, and this little company that she established
Speaker 1: ended up becoming Kitchen Aid. It was after she died
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirteen. But hey, pretty big feather in the
Speaker 1: old burial cap. I guess hotels and restaurants were the
Speaker 1: first ones to use it because even though it was
Speaker 1: super handy as a thing, houses didn't have hot water
Speaker 1: heaters that could kind of sustain that level of output
Speaker 1: at the time, so you had to have these big
Speaker 1: giant bowlers and boilers and hotels and stuff that could
Speaker 1: handle that. But her time would come by the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties when those hot water heaters got better. The home
Speaker 1: dishwasher became a pretty great thing. And I think anyone
Speaker 1: whoever has lived in a small apartment or his apartment
Speaker 1: searching a dishwasher was always very high at the top
Speaker 1: of my list because she didn't always get them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so hats off Josephine Cochrane.
Speaker 1: You know you gotta sometimes you run a vacation house.
Speaker 1: They got two of those things.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like two dishwashers, like dish washers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you were in like a house on the
Speaker 1: beach where you know, they want those houses to sleep
Speaker 1: like twenty people.
Speaker 2: Oh I gotcha.
Speaker 1: Sure, they'll have like sometimes two stoves, two dishwashers, or
Speaker 1: two sets of washers and dryers and stuff. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: We got one of those ones that's like one full
Speaker 2: size washer but broken into two drawers so you can
Speaker 2: run your dish dishwasher like pretty frequently.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it.
Speaker 2: It works really well.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like them too, And we can thank Josephine Cochrane
Speaker 2: for that. It's originated that in a pretty direct way.
Speaker 1: I wonder who came up with the drawer style.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just don't know. Yeah, do you
Speaker 2: want me to look it up?
Speaker 1: No, that's okay, okay, kid, because we're gonna talk about diapers,
Speaker 1: right yeah.
Speaker 2: We're gonna move on to an inventor named Marion Donovan
Speaker 2: who has a bunch of inventions to her name, but
Speaker 2: the one that she's most famous for is disposable diapers.
Speaker 1: That's right. You know. A lot of times, necessity is
Speaker 1: a mother of invention. And at the time Mary and
Speaker 1: Donovan was working at home as a homemaker. And this
Speaker 1: is after graduating from college and working for Vogue magazine
Speaker 1: and after inventing things even as a kid. I think
Speaker 1: in elementary school she came up with a toothpowder that
Speaker 1: improved dntal hygiene. So Mary and Donovan just had one
Speaker 1: of those inventor's brains. But while she was working as
Speaker 1: a mom and at home, she was putting her little
Speaker 1: babies down right after she changed that diaper for a
Speaker 1: little nappy time, and that baby would just be so
Speaker 1: happy they would peel over the place. And with those
Speaker 1: cloth diapers at the time that you safety pin, that
Speaker 1: would leak out onto the bed sheets. So now she's
Speaker 1: got a baby or poopy baby, and you've got a
Speaker 1: wet or poopy diaper, and then you have wet or
Speaker 1: poopy sheets, and that is no good. And she said,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a better way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And at the time, there were something called rubber
Speaker 2: pants already, which is like a diaper made of really
Speaker 2: thick material that didn't breathe, so you would just pee yourself,
Speaker 2: and your neglectful parent would leave you to wallow in
Speaker 2: your own urine and get diaper rash because that stuff
Speaker 2: wouldn't leak out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think they went over the diaper. It's like a
Speaker 3: little pair of pants exactly. Yeah, but it would keep
Speaker 3: it would prevent those leaks from happening. But that didn't
Speaker 3: mean you didn't still pee yourself, so you would get
Speaker 3: diaper rash as a result.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'd probably cut off some circulation to the calf
Speaker 1: and the waistline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they would take you out in one
Speaker 2: of those death strollers that we were raised in, and
Speaker 2: you'd spend some time on the jungle gym. That was
Speaker 2: also related to death because not only were there like
Speaker 2: rusty edges, there were also hornets nests in the end
Speaker 2: of every single one of those.
Speaker 1: That's right, So all you have to do is not
Speaker 1: vibrate those things in your Fine, this onen't just going
Speaker 1: to stay in place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you just hang from the monkey bars without moving.
Speaker 1: Dead still like a yet, you'll be fine. So she
Speaker 1: said nuts to all this, ran and grabbed a shower curtain.
Speaker 1: Cut it. Actually two size and was like, this isn't
Speaker 1: just a big pair of rubber pants, and sewed it
Speaker 1: on the outside of the cloth diaper, added some snaps
Speaker 1: so you didn't need those safety pins, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you had your cloth diaper that could fit
Speaker 1: inside of a fitted shower curtain.
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, I think that's what she started out with,
Speaker 2: was a shower curtain, but she landed ultimately on something
Speaker 2: like nylon parachute material. It could generally keep leaks in,
Speaker 2: but it was much more breathable and so this is
Speaker 2: not necessarily the dispoper. This is the thing that led
Speaker 2: to the disposable diaper. She marketed and called it boaters.
Speaker 2: To her, they looked like boats. I looked at these things.
Speaker 2: I did not see it, but that's what they were called.
Speaker 2: It's a catchy, cute little name. And what it was
Speaker 2: was like an improved rubber pants or rubber like diaper cover,
Speaker 2: because you still use the cloth diaper in there, but
Speaker 2: it would prevent leaks, but it was breathable enough that
Speaker 2: it didn't cause diaper rash. So this called the attention
Speaker 2: to a lot of people. Apparently it started being sold
Speaker 2: at sax Fifth Avenue in nineteen forty nine, and the
Speaker 2: Kiko Corporation came and knocking and said, we'll give you
Speaker 2: one million dollars for this idea. And Marion just laughed
Speaker 2: all the way to the bank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because she said, you know what, that's nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: and these two dopes podcast about me in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four h ask me like thirteen million bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty sweet for Yeah, a woman who
Speaker 2: just invented something out of necessity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it meant she was ra immediately. She
Speaker 1: got a patent for those boaters nineteen fifty one, and
Speaker 1: then went to work on what you were talking about,
Speaker 1: the disposable paper diaper, and did that and it worked
Speaker 1: pretty well, but it wasn't a big commercial success because
Speaker 1: the diaper industry didn't get behind it. They were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, this is pretty good, but all that really
Speaker 1: is doing is keeping you from having to wash cloth
Speaker 1: diapers over and over, and we don't see the value
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: Right, It's an unnecessary convenience.
Speaker 1: Nih get back to work exactly.
Speaker 2: It took ten years then finally Procter and Gamble saw
Speaker 2: the usefulness in this and came up with Pampers and
Speaker 2: the landfills of the world just shuddered in expectation.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Some other I said that Mary and Donovan also invented
Speaker 2: some other stuff too. She invented something called the Zippity
Speaker 2: do you very cool? Very cool? So it's like an
Speaker 2: elastic extension that you put onto a zipper so that
Speaker 2: you can zip your own dress much more easily. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's also something called the Big hang Up.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: It came out in the late sixties or seventies, based
Speaker 2: on the font used in the advertisement. But it essentially
Speaker 2: took your clothes and turned them the opposite way that
Speaker 2: you would normally hang them from a hanger. So you
Speaker 2: would hang it at like a rack from the what
Speaker 2: is the thing that you hang the hangers on in
Speaker 2: a closet, the rail, the pole, rod, the rod, thank you,
Speaker 2: And you would take those clothes and turn them the
Speaker 2: opposite way so you could fit more clothes front to
Speaker 2: back and side to side. It was an enormous space
Speaker 2: saving measure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was basically a grid, like a
Speaker 1: metal grid, and you could hang anything. So it used
Speaker 1: paper or not paper clips, clothes pins, right, so you
Speaker 1: could hang your belts, you could hang a hat, you
Speaker 1: could hang a pair of boots, You could hang whatever
Speaker 1: you wanted, what else, and more lots of things. But
Speaker 1: the point is this one grid could hold like four
Speaker 1: pair of pants, two pair of boots, seven belts.
Speaker 2: You sure you can hold a pair of boots up
Speaker 2: with some clothes pins, That's what he had said, all right,
Speaker 2: They must have been lightweight boots back then. Like maybe
Speaker 2: they're talking about like Aladdin shoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it speaks to the clothespins too.
Speaker 1: Sure they're not like these woke clothes bends these days.
Speaker 2: So one other thing about Mary and Donovan, if you
Speaker 2: weren't already spitting with her enough. At forty one, she
Speaker 2: went back to school and received a degree in architecture
Speaker 2: from Yale and then used it to design her own
Speaker 2: house in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Amazing, agreed, Should we take another break?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's time.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna come back and talk about grocery
Speaker 1: sacks right after this and things jogging job. All right,
Speaker 1: we promised talk of grocery sacks. And you might be thinking, well,
Speaker 1: did someone invent the grocery sack? And was that person
Speaker 1: a woman? And why is that a big deal? Because
Speaker 1: it's just a bag. No, that's not what we're going
Speaker 1: to tell you. We're going to tell you what a
Speaker 1: historian named Henry Petrowski told you in an article called
Speaker 1: the Evolution of the Grocery Bag. And a woman named
Speaker 1: Margaret Knight, who was another one of these kids who
Speaker 1: was inventing things from a very very preteen age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she got a job at twelve at a or
Speaker 2: fabric factory, textile mill, that's what they call it, yeah,
Speaker 2: cotton mill. And when you're using when you're weaving using
Speaker 2: a loom in an industrial setting, there's these little torpedo,
Speaker 2: heavy wooden torpedo things with the steel tip on the
Speaker 2: end that you use to basically separate the fibers as
Speaker 2: you're weaving. And the whole thing moves very fast, and
Speaker 2: if you lose your grip on it, that thing that
Speaker 2: is called a shuttle can go flying and injure your
Speaker 2: neighbor at the next loom. Right. So Marion Knight got
Speaker 2: a job at one of these mills, saw this, that
Speaker 2: how dangerous this could be, and before she turned thirteen,
Speaker 2: invented a way to prevent steel tip flying shuttles from
Speaker 2: flying off of the loom and injuring somebody that became
Speaker 2: distributed industry wide at all textile mills, that became like
Speaker 2: a standard part of any loom. She wasn't even thirteen yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also preteen. The age of twelve, she got a
Speaker 1: patent for a device that automatically just stops an industrial
Speaker 1: machine if something gets caught up in it. So I
Speaker 1: mean that every industrial machine on the planet now stops.
Speaker 1: When your arm gets caught or when something goes wrong,
Speaker 1: something gets caught in the machinery, they all stop. And
Speaker 1: that is because of Margaret Knight. Yep.
Speaker 2: So we finally, after years and years of this of
Speaker 2: coming up with great ideas and implementing them, she's like,
Speaker 2: I just starting to look into patenting these things. And
Speaker 2: she got a job ultimately at Columbia Paper Bag Company
Speaker 2: in Springfield, Massachusetts, and this is where her greatest patent
Speaker 2: came along. There were paper grocery sacks already, but they
Speaker 2: were kind of envelope like they didn't do the job
Speaker 2: very well. Like you know when you buy a greeting
Speaker 2: card and they put it in that bag that doesn't
Speaker 2: really do anything. It's just an envelope. It's like a
Speaker 2: cover for your greeting card to go home with.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Sure, Okay, that's what grocery bags were, like paper grocery bags.
Speaker 2: And she said, we can do way better than this.
Speaker 2: If we just make a square bottom grocery sack, it'll
Speaker 2: stand up on its own and as you put stuff
Speaker 2: into it, the weight will be distributed and you can
Speaker 2: carry so much more stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people were putting can goods in basically envelopes, like
Speaker 1: total morons, Like total morons. She came along and not
Speaker 1: only figured out that that was a good idea, figured
Speaker 1: out how to do it. In eighteen seventy, she built
Speaker 1: a wooden machine that would cut in, glue, fold and
Speaker 1: glue these things and manufacture them. She was working on
Speaker 1: a heavier duty or prototype made out of iron, and
Speaker 1: some jerk comes along and bald face steals her idea.
Speaker 1: Like he had seen this thing before. His name was
Speaker 1: Charles Annon ann An, and he had seen it a
Speaker 1: few months earlier, went to file a patent. She filed
Speaker 1: a claim against him, a patent interference suit, and he
Speaker 1: was like, there's no way that this lady came up
Speaker 1: with this thing. And she came into court with just
Speaker 1: reams of the most detailed blueprints and spelled out exactly
Speaker 1: how and when she invented it, and they went, you're wrong,
Speaker 1: and she's right, buddy, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That thieve and sob Charles Ann and I couldn't see
Speaker 2: anything about what became of him aside from losing that
Speaker 2: patent suit and something he should have gotten some sort
Speaker 2: of come up, and he shouldn't have just been let
Speaker 2: off the hook for, like you said, bald faced, stealing
Speaker 2: an idea or an invention that shouldn't be unpunished, you know.
Speaker 2: But I guess we'll have to go dig them up
Speaker 2: and have a talking to you with them. That's the
Speaker 2: best we can hope for at this time.
Speaker 1: We can besmirch his name, I guess.
Speaker 2: I guess we kind of are, but we're not besmirching.
Speaker 2: I think besmirching indicates a certain level of like exaggeration
Speaker 2: or you know, Oh okay, that's just my interpretation. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's correct or not.
Speaker 1: I've never read the definition, so you're probably right.
Speaker 2: So she won that patent claim and won of the
Speaker 2: device the patent for the device in eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: and went on to be awarded more than twenty patents
Speaker 2: in her lifetime.
Speaker 1: Amazing again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, way to go, Margaret night boo, Charles Ann and booooooo.
Speaker 1: So let's move on to the windshield wiper because this
Speaker 1: is a pretty fun one. It was a woman from Alabama.
Speaker 1: Her name was Mary Anderson born in eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: a long long time ago, long before the car came along.
Speaker 1: She was visiting New York City and she was on
Speaker 1: the I guess they were street cars, and she's like,
Speaker 1: these guys are driving around in rain and snow with
Speaker 1: their head out the side window because they can't see.
Speaker 1: They looked like a Sventura pet detective and.
Speaker 2: They would have to stop and get out and wipe
Speaker 2: the snow off of the trolley windshield like every so often.
Speaker 2: That was part of the trip, That was part of
Speaker 2: driving a trolley at the time. And she said, there
Speaker 2: has to be a better way. So she took this
Speaker 2: experience back to Alabama and she invented the first windshield wiper. Essentially.
Speaker 2: It was pretty clever as a matter of fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said, this thing wipe's windshields. I just don't
Speaker 1: know what to call it.
Speaker 2: So there was a spindle, right, so like kind of
Speaker 2: like a spool, but with a point on it sticking
Speaker 2: out of the windshield and attached to it was an
Speaker 2: arm with a squeegee on it, and the other side
Speaker 2: of the spindle that went into the car was attached
Speaker 2: to a cord that had a handle in the car,
Speaker 2: and when you pulled the handle, it operated the spring
Speaker 2: mechanism that made that windshield wiper go back and forth
Speaker 2: and it would reset and then the next time you
Speaker 2: needed to clear off your windshields, you just pulled it.
Speaker 2: No stopping, no getting out, no sticking your head out
Speaker 2: of the car, like ace Ventura. It could all be
Speaker 2: done within the car, and in I think very short order.
Speaker 2: Cadillac I think ten years after she got the patent
Speaker 2: for this, Cadillac started making wind shild wiper standard on
Speaker 2: their cars starting in nineteen twenty two. So that was
Speaker 2: all Mary Anderson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it was more like twenty years, but still
Speaker 1: it was the first. It was the first thing to
Speaker 1: roll off the line. Is something you didn't have to
Speaker 1: ask for. What do you call those options?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't an option, it was standard. That's nineteen
Speaker 2: years later. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she also would go on to build and manage
Speaker 1: an apartment building in Birmingham, made some good money doing that,
Speaker 1: and said, I'm going to California, And she went out
Speaker 1: to Fresno and operated a cattle ranch at a vineyard, yes,
Speaker 1: in her later years.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, though, on the way out there, she got a
Speaker 2: punch in the nose and it started to flow. She
Speaker 2: thought for a second that she might be sinking, but
Speaker 2: she made it out. Okay, Oh man, it's on the
Speaker 2: tip of my tongue.
Speaker 1: Uh, led up one. Okay. It was one of those.
Speaker 1: It was like it was rattling in my head and
Speaker 1: I heard it and I heard it. Oh God, that's
Speaker 1: frustrating when those never come, you know, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: it came. Then I just saw this, uh this weather
Speaker 1: person who does the weather on the news. Sure, and
Speaker 1: I guess is a Pearl Jam fan and inserts Pearl
Speaker 1: Jam lyrics into his weather report. Oh yeah, on the
Speaker 1: rag it was pretty fun.
Speaker 2: What news national?
Speaker 1: Local? I think it was a local news. I didn't
Speaker 1: catch the city. I mean maybe Seattle.
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha. So you saw this on like like the internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I was on the internet. I wasn't just
Speaker 1: watching the news.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if you were like talking about in
Speaker 2: Atlanta news person, I'm like, why aren't you telling everybody who.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I don't. As we know, I
Speaker 1: don't watch the local news. But what I do enjoy
Speaker 1: occasionally on tour is watching local news wherever I am,
Speaker 1: if it happens to be on Sure, I don't seek
Speaker 1: it out, but it's kind of fun when you hear about.
Speaker 2: Car work going on nearby.
Speaker 1: Exactly a car rick in Boston. Very fascinating, right, everyone
Speaker 1: was okay.
Speaker 2: Though, That's good. That's usually how it pans out on
Speaker 2: the news.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about car heaters?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chuck, I think this might be the last one, right,
Speaker 2: I think? So, okay, Well, let's talk car heaters because
Speaker 2: Margaret Wilcox Margaret A. Wilcox, my apologies, invented the car
Speaker 2: heater as you know it today, the car heater decades
Speaker 2: before there was such a thing as cars. W Yeah,
Speaker 2: she invented the car heater for railway cars. Because when
Speaker 2: she came along and reached I think her late twenties
Speaker 2: has sort of been the eighteen fifties eighteen sixties, rail
Speaker 2: travel was still pretty no frills for most people. Like
Speaker 2: you see that one railcar that the millionaire has, and
Speaker 2: it's like all outfitted and beautiful, like velvet and there's
Speaker 2: oil lamps and everything. Most people's experience was nothing like that.
Speaker 2: And in fact, especially during cold like cold months and
Speaker 2: cold climates, you would be freezing in the railway car.
Speaker 2: And Margaret Wilcox went stood up and said, enough enough
Speaker 2: of being cold. Let's get warm everybody. And they said,
Speaker 2: invent it, Margaret, and she said I will, I'll be
Speaker 2: right back.
Speaker 1: They said, what is warm? Even we forgot this is
Speaker 1: in Chicago, So you know, she had plenty of experience
Speaker 1: in the cold.
Speaker 2: I cannot imagine how cold it was.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean it's like now, but maybe colder.
Speaker 1: With no break, no heat, you just stayed cold.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean people's roofs collapse in Chicago in the
Speaker 2: winter because it gets so snowy, and that would indicate
Speaker 2: it gets pretty cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. So she's like, hold on a minute, I
Speaker 1: know that they're shoveling coal up there. Those guys are
Speaker 1: sweating up there in the engine room where freezing er
Speaker 1: took us off back here? What do we gotta do
Speaker 1: to get some of that heat back here? And shockingly,
Speaker 1: no one had ever thought of that the fact that
Speaker 1: there was heat on board that train in Spain, and
Speaker 1: all you had to do was send it back to
Speaker 1: the what do you call them passenger cars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's essentially what she did. She figured out
Speaker 2: how to pipe engine heat back to the passengers. There
Speaker 2: were some problems with this invention the train car heater.
Speaker 2: One was there was no way whatsoever to regulate this heat.
Speaker 2: I mean, I imagine you could open the windows when
Speaker 2: you needed to, but it would just get hotter and
Speaker 2: hotter and hotter in the rail car. And that was
Speaker 2: kind of a problem, but I think it was still
Speaker 2: preferable to the cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now is where I introduce you to my
Speaker 1: first car as a sixteen year old. Talked about it
Speaker 1: before nineteen sixty eight, Volkswagen Beatle. Sure, and if you
Speaker 1: ever run those old volkswagens, you know they had heat
Speaker 1: that I like to refer to as the ankle burners.
Speaker 2: I remember that.
Speaker 1: Same concept as Margaret Wilcox's heat idea. H those Oldvw's
Speaker 1: would just pump heat straight from that rear engine out
Speaker 1: these little vents on the floorboard right by your ankles.
Speaker 1: And there was at least in the sixty eight that
Speaker 1: I had. There was no way of regulating it. I
Speaker 1: think at a seventy five later on that had like
Speaker 1: a little lever that you could, you know, bring in
Speaker 1: a little bit of the cool air too.
Speaker 2: It just opened the passenger door.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. But I had a hole in my floorboard too,
Speaker 1: so that up that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure you said that, and I'm sure when
Speaker 2: you've told me that before, I told you that my
Speaker 2: dad had a hole in his floorboard of his Malibu
Speaker 2: when we were kids.
Speaker 1: So right, less just sit there and watch the world
Speaker 1: go by under your face, right.
Speaker 2: So, Uh. Margaret Wilcox's idea was implemented in train cars
Speaker 2: more importantly when automobile engineers came along and started inclosing cars,
Speaker 2: because you know, the first cars were all open, there
Speaker 2: was no roof. Yeah, as they started doing close them,
Speaker 2: they're like, we could control the climate in here. We
Speaker 2: need some sort of climate control mechanism. And they looked
Speaker 2: around and they found Margaret Wilcox's patent for transmitting engine
Speaker 2: heat to the passenger compartment. And over time they kind
Speaker 2: of refined it and it got more and more advanced
Speaker 2: to where now there's hot coolant that's heated by the
Speaker 2: engine that transfers that heat to the cabin air when
Speaker 2: you turn the heat on. Even more amazingly, you can
Speaker 2: you can adjust the heat the temperature by letting in
Speaker 2: colder outside air without even opening your windows.
Speaker 1: That's right, And she got a patent for this thing.
Speaker 1: Eighteen ninety three. She received a patent. Obviously, there were
Speaker 1: women were able to get patents by that point, and
Speaker 1: she was on a pretty short list.
Speaker 2: At least one hundred.
Speaker 1: Was there a hundred? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Remember one hundred women? Who had the list of one
Speaker 2: hundred women who were inventors that had patents that the Patent.
Speaker 1: Office created, and it called one hundred women.
Speaker 2: I guess not. No, you're right, I wonder what the
Speaker 2: list was.
Speaker 1: I gotta get that list.
Speaker 2: I mean, it had to be decent size. It took
Speaker 2: four clerks ten days to compile the list.
Speaker 1: But they had to go through all the patents period though,
Speaker 1: to get that list. So yeah, yeah, who knows, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, she was on that list eventually, that's right.
Speaker 2: Or actually that's not even true either. The list came
Speaker 2: out a couple of years before she got her patent,
Speaker 2: five years before, so it's completely moot. But there is
Speaker 2: one other mention about her too that I love. She
Speaker 2: had some other ideas that she patented, unfortunately not in
Speaker 2: her name, because this was before women could have had
Speaker 2: property rights for a combination clothes dishwasher.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I don't know if.
Speaker 2: It's the same time. Maybe the same time. If so,
Speaker 2: there's really gross. Yeah, but it's still also very clever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, you don't want your you don't want your
Speaker 1: champagne glass being watched next to your bloomers.
Speaker 2: No, especially if they're so because you drank too much champagne.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
Speaker 2: Are you sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, since Chuck affirmed that he has nothing else,
Speaker 2: I think everybody, it's time for listener man, I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna call this misunderstanding from episode titles. Okay, And I
Speaker 1: should say that we had a wonderful young woman in
Speaker 1: maybe DC. I think it was DC that said that
Speaker 1: she was a bird enthusiast and that she was all
Speaker 1: excited about the Cranes episode and then realized it was
Speaker 1: construction Cranes. That's why we've titled things like our Nirvana episode.
Speaker 1: I think it was Nirvana, not the band sure, so
Speaker 1: we do stuff like that. We try to be clear,
Speaker 1: but not always.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we're purposely obtuse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because like you might want the bird crane and
Speaker 1: then be delightfully surprised or disappointed, right exactly. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: I'm in and out, but og all the time. Stuff
Speaker 1: you should know has stayed with me as a weekly
Speaker 1: listen ever since I heard the Jellyfish app. I consider
Speaker 1: myself well versed in the English language and American pop culture,
Speaker 1: but every now and then, titles of the episode set
Speaker 1: me up for quite the surprise. I should probably read
Speaker 1: the descriptions for the episodes, yes, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: listen regardless of what's the point. For example, Hobo Signs,
Speaker 1: I thought it was about handwritten signs that hitchhikers make,
Speaker 1: or someone saying will work for food, or the end
Speaker 1: is messed what I think it was probably supposed to
Speaker 1: be the end is near.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was some weird a auto correct.
Speaker 1: I like the end is mess though, IM gont it?
Speaker 1: That should be a T shirt? Sure, I like that
Speaker 1: to my delight as a ux designer. It was about
Speaker 1: iconography and communication even better than those cardboard signs. The
Speaker 1: last episode about conductors. I know what's coming. I thought
Speaker 1: it was about train conductors, and the tagline what the
Speaker 1: heck is going on there was referring to their mindset
Speaker 1: when they're patrolling in the aisle and train station, like
Speaker 1: an American equivalent of the British what's all this? Then?
Speaker 1: I was also hoping that it was not about electric
Speaker 1: conductors because I really wanted a train episode. Turned out
Speaker 1: I was wrong once. Thanks for all the great knowledge
Speaker 1: that is from Morton Laggerud in Norway.
Speaker 2: Great name, Morton, Thank you for listening to us all
Speaker 2: these years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have we done one on just trains?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. No, that seems like a big,
Speaker 2: big one.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a big asmr sid too.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry everybody hopefully Mesiphonia side.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we could try to do one on train.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we just have to figure out how to condense it.
Speaker 2: Can't get into electric trains, I'll tell you that, by God,
Speaker 2: no way. Well, if you want to be like Morton
Speaker 2: and let us know some hilariousness that comes from our
Speaker 2: titles or something we said, or just something you thought of.
Speaker 2: We love hearing stuff like that, you can send it
Speaker 2: to us in an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.