WOMEN AS INVENTORS 345 



issued to as many different women. Among the articles 

 patented by them were an ice-cream freezer, a weighing 

 scale and a fan attachment for a rocking chair. It was 

 not recorded, however, that this last invention, valuable 

 as it was apparently, ever became particularly popular. 

 But by far the most remarkable of woman's inventions 

 during this period was a submarine telescope and lamp, 

 for which a patent was awarded in 1845 to Sarah Mather. 



From 1851 to 1861, twenty-eight patents were issued to 

 women just twice the number awarded them during the 

 preceding decade. Most of these patents were for articles 

 of domestic use or feminine apparel. Four of them, how- 

 ever, comprised a scale for instrumental music, for mount- 

 ing fluid lenses, a fountain pen and an improvement in 

 reaping and mowing machines. 



The following decade is remarkable for the wonderful 

 increase in the number of inventions due to women, for 

 there was a sudden jump from twenty-eight to four hun- 

 dred and forty-one patents awarded them between the 

 years 1861 and 1871. Women now began to have confidence 

 in their inventive faculties, and, no longer content with ex- 

 ercising their genius on articles of clothing and culinary 

 utensils, sewing, washing and churning machines, they 

 began to devote their attention to objects that were en- 

 tirely foreign to their ordinary home activities. This is 

 clearly evinced by the patents they obtained for such 

 inventions as improvements in locomotive wheels, devices 

 for reducing straw and other fibrous substances for the 

 manufacture of paper pulp, improvements in corn huskers, 

 low-water indicators, steam and other whistles, corn plows, 

 a method of constructing screw propellers, improvements 

 in materials for packing journals and bearings, in fire 

 alarms, thermometers, railroad car heaters, improvements 

 in lubricating railway journals, in conveyors of smoke and 

 cinders for locomotives, in pyrotechnic night signals, bur- 

 glar alarms, railway car safety apparatus, in apparatus 



