Thanks for this thread - it's given me a long overdue reminder to brush up on my history (herstory?
). Some women responsible for great inventions that I've now learnt about:
Bertha Benz financier, publicised and promoter and first real driver of the worlds first car (also actual inventor of the first brake pads for it). Would have been the patent holder but she had got married by the time it was granted and so was not allowed to hold property herself.
Also inventor of a car (the K-D automobile) but famous for creating a machine to make paper bags Margaret Knight also invented many other machines including rotary engines and improved combustion engines. She had no education after the age of 12 and came up with her first invention around that age working in a cotton mill (it was an automatic shut off mechanism for malfunctioning looms which saved many lives). She had to fight every step of the way - a man called Charles's Annan, saw her paper bag machine model being created in an iron workshop and filed a patent on it before she did. The defence his lawyer offered was that women didn’t have adequate knowledge about machines to be able to create such a sophisticated machine. Fortunately she had enough proof to be awarded the patent in court but even after that the workers at the factory where the bags were to be made refused to take instructions from her on how to install the machine because they believed that women didn’t understand machinery.
For someone a little more recent Stephanie Kwolek, inventor of Kevlar, (super light and flexible compound with 5 times the strength of steel) is used in lots of hi tech kit including mobiles, aircraft, bullet proof vests, and is being tested now as a way to protect aircraft from onboard bombs
And finally, because submarines were in the thread title, Katharine Blodgett inventor of non reflective glass enabling spy cameras and better submarine periscopes in ww2 (she also improved gas masks and invented a way to de-ice aircraft in flight which meant pilots could fly in conditions that had previously prevented them).
Apart from Benz they never married, I suspect inventing may not be compatible with wifework...