It was really a woman who

Mary Anderson invented the windshield wiper in 1903.

Invented the windshield wiper:

Charlotte Bridgwood upped the ante going electric in 1917. She’s the inventor of the windshield wiper in its modern incarnation. Other inventions by women in the way of cars, that most manly man of manly arenas include the carburetor, a clutch mechanism, an electric engine starter, and a starting mechanism. I read that on about.com. And from an interview with Ethlie Ann Vare who wrote Mothers of Invention — From the Bra to the Bomb, Forgotten Women and Their Unforgettable Ideas, I learned that:

“It was a woman, Lady Mary Montagu, who first cured smallpox.
It was a woman, Gladys Hobby, who first purified penicillin.

It was a woman, Gertrude Elion, who cured childhood leukemia.

(It was also a woman) Stephanie Kwolek (who) invented Kevlar (bulletproof fabric.)” -America.gov

I got to all those nifty tidbits after reading that it was a woman who designed the paper bag, an article related to the exhibit Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen showing at the MOMA which sounds really cool (if I was in New York and not Barcelona I’d go to it.)  I read that although it was popularly attributed to a man by the name of Francis Wolle (This kind of thing happens all the time, every day. Like didn’t it happen to you sometime this week?), it was really a woman, Margaret Knight (not pictured left, this is a ‘factory girl’), who invented the square bottom bag, the paper bag we know today, and developed the machine to automate the making of it.  Ms. Knight was also the first female to be granted a U.S. patent.

So this Sunday, light a little candle (and stick it inside a brown paper bag – as in here, from our wedding walk) to Margaret Knight.

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