CHAPTER X 



WOMEN AS INVENTORS 



"There have been very learned women as there have 

 been women warriors, but there have never been women 

 inventors. ' n Thus wrote Voltaire with that flippancy and 

 cocksureness which was so characteristic of the author of 

 the Dictionnaire PhilosopJiique a man who was ever ready 

 to give, offhand, a categorical answer to any question that 

 came before him for discussion. His countryman, Proud- 

 hon, expressed the same opinion in other words when he 

 wrote, Les femmes n'ont rien invent e, pas meme leur 

 quenouille women have invented nothing, not even their 

 distaff. 



Had these two writers thoroughly sifted the evidence 

 available, even in their day, for a proper consideration of 

 this interesting subject, they would, both of them, have 

 reached a very different conclusion from that which is ex- 

 pressed in the sentences just quoted. Had they consulted 

 the records of antiquity, they would have learned that most 

 of the earliest and most important inventions were attrib- 

 uted to women; and, had they studied the reports of ex- 

 plorers among the savage tribes of the modern world, they 

 would have found that these early legends and traditions 



i ' l On a vu des femmes tres savantes, comme en f ut des guerrieres, 

 mais il n'y en eut jamais d 'inventrices. " Dictionnaire Philosophique, 

 sub voce Femmes. Condorcet, in commenting on this statement, re- 

 marks that "if men capable of invention were alone to have a place 

 in the world, there would be many a vacant one, even in the acade- 

 mies. ' ' 



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