Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Guess what Will, Oh Will? It's not here, neither is Mango.
Speaker 1: It's just me, Isn't it kind of fun hearing a
Speaker 1: lady voice on this show? Well? Did you know that
Speaker 1: the foot pedal trash can was invented by Lilian Gilbreth,
Speaker 1: the mom from Cheaper by the Dozen? Sure was in
Speaker 1: the early nine dreds. Lilian came up with several ingenious
Speaker 1: little inventions to improve things that already existed. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the trash can already existed, but could you open it
Speaker 1: with your foot? No? No, you couldn't, not tell Lilian
Speaker 1: came along and fixed it. She also added shelves to
Speaker 1: refrigerator doors. Where'd you put the condiments? Until then? Where
Speaker 1: did you put the catch up? Until Lilian came along
Speaker 1: along with her husband. She devoted her entire life to
Speaker 1: try to figure out the one best to do any task,
Speaker 1: how to make anything a little easier. That's just the
Speaker 1: story of being a woman, right, We just want our
Speaker 1: lives to be a little bit easier. She dubbed this
Speaker 1: new field time and Motion studies, and in fact, she
Speaker 1: was the first woman admitted to the National Academy of Engineering,
Speaker 1: where she would later do all sorts of other important things,
Speaker 1: like help Hoover create jobs during the Great Depression and
Speaker 1: also figure out how to quickly convert places into factories
Speaker 1: during World War Two. She did all of this, all
Speaker 1: of this important work while raising twelve children, twelve of them.
Speaker 1: She is like the patron saint of efficient mothers, and
Speaker 1: I personally would like to thank her every time that
Speaker 1: I don't have to use my hands to open a
Speaker 1: trash can. Thank you, Lillian. That is just the first
Speaker 1: of the nine facts that I have for you today
Speaker 1: about surprising things invented by women. Let's dig in. I
Speaker 1: am your host for today, Joe Piazza filling in for
Speaker 1: Will and Mango on Part Time Genius. They promised they're
Speaker 1: going to come back and do more episodes soon, but
Speaker 1: maybe they won't. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm here forever.
Speaker 1: They passed me the bank today on International Women's Day,
Speaker 1: and frankly, I was happy to grab it from them
Speaker 1: because this is something that I have been dying to
Speaker 1: talk about for a while now. Because when we think
Speaker 1: of inventors, and I want you to think about it
Speaker 1: for a minute, I want you to close your eyes,
Speaker 1: and I want you to say the word inventor. You
Speaker 1: can say it out loud, or you can say it
Speaker 1: in your head. And then I want you to think
Speaker 1: about who pops into your head. Who's picture Thomas Addison,
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Old men, A whole lot
Speaker 1: of old men. You can Google inventors too, and I
Speaker 1: actually I just did Google inventors here and all that
Speaker 1: pops up on the first image search is a bunch
Speaker 1: of old men. I should not find this surprising because
Speaker 1: women have been written out of a lot of history
Speaker 1: since the beginning of history. But now, right now, today,
Speaker 1: in this episode, it is time to give lady inventors
Speaker 1: their due. Let's get started. Number two the dishwasher. This
Speaker 1: is actually a kind of weird story because the dishwasher
Speaker 1: was invented by a socialite, a fancy rich lady named
Speaker 1: Josephine Cochrane. Josephine's dad was a civil engineer and her
Speaker 1: grandfather was an inventor. Old men again, and he made
Speaker 1: several important contributions to the steamboat so engineering things and
Speaker 1: make and stuff. It was just in her blood. But
Speaker 1: she had lived most of her life as a socialite,
Speaker 1: fancy rich girl. She was charged with entertaining the guests
Speaker 1: that her husband brought home. One day, she realized that
Speaker 1: her servants were chipping her china while they were handwashing
Speaker 1: the plates. She was very irritated by this, very irritated
Speaker 1: that her china was getting chipped, so she started doing
Speaker 1: the china herself. Washing the dishes the crazy thing for
Speaker 1: lady to do back then, and she realized just how
Speaker 1: tedious a task that it was took it as a challenge.
Speaker 1: She went to her shed out back, because you know,
Speaker 1: all rich ladies have a shed, built a box, constructed
Speaker 1: wires to hold the dishes, and realized that a simple
Speaker 1: jet of soapy, warm water heated by a copper boiler
Speaker 1: would do the task for her. Initially the machine was
Speaker 1: hand cranked, but then she added a motor to outsource
Speaker 1: that work. I love a good outsource in she presented
Speaker 1: her Cochran dishwasher at Chicago's World Fair, where it won
Speaker 1: an award for its design and durability. Later, she made
Speaker 1: a heap of money when her company sold to Kitchen Aid.
Speaker 1: Also fun fact, her face was then also put on
Speaker 1: a Romanian stamp. We don't know why that is, but
Speaker 1: good lesson for all of us. When the people who
Speaker 1: work for you aren't doing a good enough job, invent
Speaker 1: something to replace them. Make a ton of money, get
Speaker 1: your face on a foreign stamp. None of us like
Speaker 1: to wash dishes. I actually don't wash the dishes in
Speaker 1: my house. My husband washes the dishes and he loads
Speaker 1: the dishwasher because I apparently always do it wrong. So
Speaker 1: one woman actually tried to invent a giant dishwasher that
Speaker 1: would clean the entire room. Oregon inventor Francis Gabe. As
Speaker 1: a kid, she had always dreamed of growing up having
Speaker 1: kids in a home. But then one day one of
Speaker 1: her kids left this big trail of gross fig jam
Speaker 1: on the floor, and she was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't want to clean it. I don't want to
Speaker 1: clean it. How many parents out there have been like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to clean that up. What if we
Speaker 1: just leave it here forever? So she got to work
Speaker 1: and she invented a self cleaning kitchen using sprinklers, jets,
Speaker 1: and apparently sixty eight different patented devices. She basically put
Speaker 1: her kitchen through a car wash and then dried the
Speaker 1: place by blowing soapy water down a spout that get
Speaker 1: this funneled into her doghouse to then I can't so
Speaker 1: I can't stop laughing. I just I can't say this
Speaker 1: without laughing to give her Great Dan a shower. Now,
Speaker 1: places like Nickelodeon Magazine and The Daily Mail they declared
Speaker 1: her a genius because she was it's a freaking genius.
Speaker 1: Her neighbors were way less kind, way less happy with
Speaker 1: what she was doing and referred to her as quote
Speaker 1: that crazy bat. Next up, number four. This one is
Speaker 1: something that I've actually that I always wondered about because
Speaker 1: I am a big fan of a Murphy bed. I
Speaker 1: fantasized about a Murphy bed when I was little. I
Speaker 1: think I saw on a sitcom once and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I want a bed that comes down
Speaker 1: from the wall. It's like magic. And so I've always
Speaker 1: kind of wondered who invented the Murphy bed. This week
Speaker 1: I found out and Sarah E. Good was born in Toledo,
Speaker 1: but she ended up a slave because of the Fugitive
Speaker 1: Slave Act. After the Civil War, she fled Chicago, where
Speaker 1: she and her husband started a furniture shop. That is
Speaker 1: when Sarah realized that people in small apartments didn't have
Speaker 1: space to fit both a desk and a bed. In Chicago,
Speaker 1: those apartments were like huge out to New York apartments. So,
Speaker 1: being a real smart lady, she figured out a way
Speaker 1: to combine the two this kind of convertible roll top dusk.
Speaker 1: The desk had all of the typical desk things, It
Speaker 1: had space to write, it had drawers for stationary but
Speaker 1: when you pulled the lever it flipped into a single bed.
Speaker 1: Sarah ended up with one of the very first patents
Speaker 1: ever given to an African American woman. Fifteen years later,
Speaker 1: the Morphy Bed built on this idea. Now, how many
Speaker 1: of you are out there are poor over coffee people.
Speaker 1: My husband is a very big poor over coffee person.
Speaker 1: I am a Mr. Coffee person because I like to
Speaker 1: wake up and hit a button and get coffee. But
Speaker 1: he likes to do all of this work before his
Speaker 1: caffeine goes into his body, which seems crazy to me.
Speaker 1: But anyone who does make poor over coffee knows Melita Filters.
Speaker 1: And I always assumed that Melita was just like some
Speaker 1: fancy Italian coffee maker. Turns out she was actually a
Speaker 1: German housewife. And although people had been drinking coffee for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, the beverage was pretty unpleasant and bitter
Speaker 1: and gross until the early twentieth century. At the time,
Speaker 1: there was no solid way to filter grounds, no easy,
Speaker 1: efficient way. Residue lingered in cups, and it made it
Speaker 1: all bitter and gritty. Melita decided she no longer wanted
Speaker 1: her coffee to be gross. Didn't want chunks floating in
Speaker 1: her coffee, so she ripped a piece of water paper
Speaker 1: from her son, Willie's schoolbook, laid it over the bottom
Speaker 1: of a perforated tin cup, let the liquid pass through
Speaker 1: Wila coffee with no chunks. The result was a deliciously
Speaker 1: smooth cup of coffee with all the flavor none of
Speaker 1: the bits. She quickly patented her filter top device lined
Speaker 1: with filter paper, and began her transformation from mom to mogul.
Speaker 1: Within three years, her son and her husband were working
Speaker 1: for and her company was selling paper filters in a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty countries. This is also the mark of
Speaker 1: a good woman. Boss instituted a rare five day work
Speaker 1: week for her employees, this was not common at the time.
Speaker 1: This was not usual. She increased their vacation time and
Speaker 1: created a company fund to help with her employees housing
Speaker 1: and health issues. Oh my god, it was like a
Speaker 1: safety net. Imagine that crazy. Over time, her firm also
Speaker 1: made other advances in the coffee world, including conical filters
Speaker 1: and vacuum packing. She really did make coffee the best
Speaker 1: part of waking up. Speaking of coffee, and I'm always
Speaker 1: speaming out coffee. I need some right now, and we're
Speaker 1: going to pause for an ad. I'm gonna get me
Speaker 1: a cup, gonna filter it, just like a German housewife
Speaker 1: seeing a sec. Okay, hello, we're back. Still not well
Speaker 1: and mango. Nope, Joe still right here. So speaking of
Speaker 1: mom inventors, and I like to talk about mom inventors
Speaker 1: a lot, let's talk about bet Ness Smith. Graham is
Speaker 1: a woman who never wanted to be a secretary, but
Speaker 1: in ninety one she joined a typing pool after a
Speaker 1: recent divorce. She needed to support herself and her son.
Speaker 1: The problem was now she was a really really crap typist,
Speaker 1: like bad, but she couldn't get fired because she needed
Speaker 1: money to support herself and her son. So she came
Speaker 1: up with a hack for that. She filled a nail
Speaker 1: polished bottle with some white tempera paint and took it
Speaker 1: to work. Then she used the little nail polish brush
Speaker 1: cover all of her mistakes, went back typed again. Before long,
Speaker 1: everyone on her team was like, I need that bottle
Speaker 1: of white out. But it wasn't called white out at first.
Speaker 1: At first Graham was calling it mistake out, which I
Speaker 1: think is actually better than white out, And she thought
Speaker 1: she might have a business there, but she was reluctant
Speaker 1: to leave that job. She was doing this as a
Speaker 1: side hustle. Her boss found out fired her for doing
Speaker 1: her mistake out business on company time, But that turned
Speaker 1: out to be the push that she needed, because within
Speaker 1: six years is mistake Out, then called liquid Paper, was
Speaker 1: a million dollar business in Gillette bought the company for
Speaker 1: forty seven point five million dollars. And that son of hers,
Speaker 1: the one that she was working so hard to raise
Speaker 1: all on her own, he did okay for himself too.
Speaker 1: He is Michael Nesmith, the tall guy in a hat
Speaker 1: from the Monkeys. Yes, the creator of white Out spawned
Speaker 1: a monkey. You're welcome for that. People. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: not a fan of the Monkeys, you will definitely be
Speaker 1: a fan of this life saving device. Yep, the inventor
Speaker 1: of one of the very first usable life rafts, the
Speaker 1: kind of life raft that actually saved a lot of
Speaker 1: lives was a woman named Maria Beasley. Now, of course
Speaker 1: the life raft existed, there's been like life canoes since
Speaker 1: the beginning of boats. But Maria Beasley made a much
Speaker 1: improved life raft. This life raft had guardrails, was fireproof,
Speaker 1: it was foldable for easy storage, which meant you could
Speaker 1: put a lot of them on the boat. And her
Speaker 1: life rafts were actually used on the Titanic and saved
Speaker 1: over seven hundred lives. That was not everybody on the Titanic,
Speaker 1: as we all know. My heart will go on, but
Speaker 1: it was a lot of people, just not Leo. Now
Speaker 1: I have a very important question for you. What would
Speaker 1: we do without fire escapes? Well, my friends, we would
Speaker 1: get trapped in burning buildings. In the late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, this was a huge problem in New
Speaker 1: York City. But that problem was fixed when a woman
Speaker 1: named Anna Connelly came up with an idea. She's from Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: of course, Hello Philly, we are the best city in America.
Speaker 1: We make good people here in Philadelphia. I'm saying this
Speaker 1: all to you from my closet in Philadelphia. Anyway, Anna Connolly, Philadelphian,
Speaker 1: proposed and patented the idea of for fire escapes in
Speaker 1: seven just little metal bridges placed on the outside of
Speaker 1: a building. So this wasn't great is because it was cheap.
Speaker 1: It was too cheap for landlords to say, oh no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. But they were also outside,
Speaker 1: so cities could tell who was compliant and who wasn't,
Speaker 1: and they could say, build a fire escape because we
Speaker 1: don't want anyone to die in your burning building. This
Speaker 1: ingenious invention by a Philadelphian not only saved thousands of lives,
Speaker 1: but it also allowed firefighters to climb up a building
Speaker 1: and save people who were trapped in it, particularly children.
Speaker 1: We have Anna Connolly to think for all of that.
Speaker 1: And finally, last but not least, by the way, how
Speaker 1: could I get Google to put some of these women
Speaker 1: up when we search for inventor? Who can I call
Speaker 1: at Google to make that happen. I want to tell
Speaker 1: you about a woman whose name is so good that
Speaker 1: I want to make a movie about her, just so
Speaker 1: I can call it El Dorado Jones. That's her name,
Speaker 1: El Dorado Jones, El Dorado was born in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: in Missouri, and she needed a job, so she took
Speaker 1: the only job that a woman could get in Missouri.
Speaker 1: She was a school teacher and then a stenographer, because
Speaker 1: those were the kinds of jobs they gave women. But
Speaker 1: at heart, she was an inventor, and over time she
Speaker 1: invented a ton of things that you used today. The
Speaker 1: lightweight travel iron, a travel sized ironing board, a collapsible
Speaker 1: hat rack. Actually I don't know if we still use
Speaker 1: a collapsible hat rack, but we would if we still
Speaker 1: wore a lot of hats. She also apparently made some
Speaker 1: sort of anti damp salt shaker, which sounds great because
Speaker 1: who wants damp salt? Damp salon is gross. They actually
Speaker 1: nicknamed her the Iron Woman, which is also a great
Speaker 1: name for a book. Let's actually put the names together,
Speaker 1: El Dorado Jones, the Iron Woman. It's like a superhero.
Speaker 1: She was also a chain smoking badass who started a
Speaker 1: factory in Illinois that mostly employed women, and not just women,
Speaker 1: but women of middle age forty year old women working
Speaker 1: in this factory. And in that factory, she designed the
Speaker 1: very first successful airplane muffler, which she patented a few
Speaker 1: years later and it muffled the sound of airplanes without
Speaker 1: using an energy. Now, I'm not going to read you
Speaker 1: her entire New York Times obituary, but I am going
Speaker 1: to read the last line because it's also really good
Speaker 1: and it's clearly the first line of El Dorado Jones
Speaker 1: Iron Woman, the movie. This quote that El Dorado Jones
Speaker 1: used to say, do not forget to exploit men all
Speaker 1: you can, because if you don't, they will exploit you. Now,
Speaker 1: that is a nice way to end International Women's Day.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's part time genius. I am
Speaker 1: Joe Piazza. Thank you so much for listening, and if
Speaker 1: you haven't checked out my other podcasts, which by the way,
Speaker 1: are some of Mango's favorites. And he'd say that too
Speaker 1: if I let him back in the studio, but but
Speaker 1: I'm keeping him out and taking the show forever. He
Speaker 1: told me to tell you that. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out the Committed podcast, which is going into its sixth season,
Speaker 1: so there's plenty of to binge and under the influence,
Speaker 1: a deep dive into the world of mom influencers, men
Speaker 1: of whom are inventors themselves, and you'll love it. Promise
Speaker 1: Happy International Women's Day. Hi guys. M part Time Genius
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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