FROM IRONING TO TRANSPLANTS: WOMAN AS INVENTOR
Fred M. Amram
General College
University of Minnesota
An illustrated case study of the history of ironing shows that woman's creativity has been reflected in her efforts to invent herself out of drudgery. Women have received patents for their contributions ranging from the mangle to the steam iron to wash-and-wear clothing. Having invented themselves out of the laundry, women now patent high-tech inventions worthy of great profit and Nobel prizes. This history of women inventing must be part of the classroom experience for all youngsters.
The author, with a tendency toward a "rumpled" look, is enormously grateful to Jerry Fingerman, Vi Swanson and Edna Glissman for nurturing his interest in smoothing irons. Gratitude is extended to Marthe Mainerich, a resource of resources, and to Sandra Brick Pangborn, our artful illustrator. Lord Chesterfield taught us that style is the dress of thoughts. Special thanks to Mary Ellen Gee for dressing these thoughts.
Motivating Young Inventors
Let us not follow where the path may lead. Let us go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail.
Japanese Proverb
Teaching invention skills is relatively easy. A variety of techniques exist, ranging from the straightforward Parnes five-step creative problem-solving process to the more sophisticated synectics approach. All seem to work well in the classroom and in the guru's workshop. Unfortunately, schoolteachers are not always successful in assuring that the new skills are utilized in the "real world." Adults seem to be better at taking the new skills into the world of work because they feel the pressure to produce and compete. Even adults, however, revert to old behaviors unless they experience constant renewal and support.
More difficult than teaching creativity skills seems to be the challenge for teachers to provide answers to the "so what?" questions: Why should one invent (or be inventive)? Why should one bother to engage in the hard work of thinking? Where is the value? What is the purpose? Why should one risk being the fool? What are the motivators for inventing.
An excellent response to the "so what?" questions is to point out that almost everything around us has been invented: the ceiling tiles, the door hinges, the tools that shaped the door, the dirt repellent fabric protector on the rug and on our coat. Making a list helps to show that our environment is truly man-made-or woman-made! And almost all of the inventions--big and small--have changed the way we live. Inventing is truly important and useful work. Inventors are powerful change agents who determine our quality of life.
Related to the "so what?" question is the "I can't" attitude. Edisons and Bells and Marconis invent. But not me. I'm not smart enough or. creative enough. The best response is two-fold: First, to generate role models--to introduce the "I can't" individual to all the people who have done it. The array of inventors includes children and tinkerers and scientists and housewives who tried to ease their toil or who chose to add beauty or joy to their lives.
The second answer to the "I can't" person is to demonstrate that inventions come in little pieces. One does not invent a telephone or a computer. One invents a component, a part, a piece. And even the new component will be an improvement an a prior technology--usually a small improvement. Invention comes in bits and pieces. And that makes inventing less daunting.
A Woman's Perspective
"Looking back on it all, Shales wrote in one of his last letters: 'Whatever I may have felt, in the early days, of the value of the typewriter, it is obviously a blessing to mankind, and especially to womankind. I am glad I have had something to do with it. I builded wiser than I knew, and the world has had the benefit of it'" (Hooper, 1972).
Women and girls are most likely to experience the "so what?" syndrome. Woman's work has historically been little valued and so to invent new tools or products or processes to alleviate drudgery or to enhance the quality of "woman's work" has been deemed unimportant. If any inventions are important, they are the inventions that affect men--improvements in men's tools.
Women and girls are also most likely to experience the "I can't" syndrome. Historically, women have not had the powerful experience of being change agents. Girls have few inventor role models. What has been invented for women has, for the most part, been invented by men--and not always for their benefit (despite Shales' claim at the head of this section). women and girls, if they are motivated to invent, often lack the technological training to understand how things work. Nor do they have the skill with tools to test the inventions and to build working models. Given this social environment, why should women and girls feel confident?
Half of the student inventors at the Redwood Falls (Minnesota) Inventors Congress were girls, but only two of the 87 adult exhibitors were women (Bass, 1990). The figures are typical of statistics in other states. Girls participate equally in student inventor projects. But the adult world seems to be different. In 1959, only about 1.5% of American patents were granted to American women. By 1984, the percentage was double, and in 1989, the figure was around 4.3 % (U.S. Dept. of Commerce). Better is not good enough.
The Problem
As to truly creative imagination, its functions are mainly twofold. One is to hunt, the other to change what is found (Osborn, 1963).
Schools must do more than teach creative-thinking skills. Schools must find ways to motivate youngsters to take their inventing skills outside the classroom and to apply them in the real world of work, play, and relationships. Furthermore, schools must be sure that female students have equal access to a positive history with role models that lead to attitudes of personal power and self-confidence. Finally, boys must be exposed to a history that includes powerful and creative women so that they, as men, can provide the support and encouragement that women have so long provided men.
The next section provides a mini-history of technology, a case study of a single set of problems taken from "woman's work" to illustrate how women have responded to their social environment as agents of change. The fact that men, too, have contributed to this history. of inventions is irrelevant for us. We want to illustrate how one can present a history of invention without using only male examples. The teacher can create more balanced models.
Removing Wrinkles: A Case Study
Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. So they sawed together to make themselves loincloths (Genesis 111, 7).
Early in recorded history one finds an interesting "smoothing" fabric. What was the motivation? One wonders if Adam and Eve, after they left the Garden, were concerned with the smoothness of their loincloths.
Stones, balls of glass (figure 3), and similar fabric "smoothing" tools were found in the graves of early Scandinavian women. These primitive forerunners of irons were vigorously rubbed on fabric and surely great energy was required to achieve the desired results.
The heated smoothing iron became useful when flax, cotton, and, silk could be spun into fine thread that, when woven, would respond to heat. The early Chinese used a heated "pan iron" (figure 4) as early as the eighth century. Burning charcoal was placed into the brass, bronze, or iron "bowl." A handle, sometimes made of bone, wood, ivory, or jade, extending from the side of the bowl was used to rub or "press" the heated pan on the fabric.
By the 13th century, some Europeans were placing hot charcoal into an enclosed "hot box." A handle over the top enhanced "pressing." To keep the charcoal burning, the "box" irons usually had a chimney, or an air circulation device much like a fireplace, to aid combustion. Holes near the bottom provided the charcoal with fresh oxygen while spaces near the top provided an exhaust (to emit "exhausted" air) . Unfortunately, charcoal dust was released from the holes and chimneys, causing "smuts" on the clean fabric. Interestingly, Anna Niffeler received a U.S. design patent for a charcoal heated tailor's iron as recently as 1368 (figure 5). The iron, which was heated internally with charcoal, included specifications for a series of small perforations to be placed on each side of the iron. Understandably, these were sometimes omitted in manufacture.
Box irons heated with "slugs" were developed concurrently with or subsequent to the charcoal-heated iron. The history is not clear. Slugs were heated in or on a stove and placed inside the iron. While the "slug" irons eliminated the problem of charcoal dust on clean fabric, they required some additional effort. Slugs needed more frequent replacement in the box because they did not retain their heat as long as the burning charcoal.
Another solution to the problem of heating the smoothing or pressing tool was to create a solid piece of iron which could be heated externally, usually on a stove. It became the tool of choice for most, and certainly impacted the English language-Even now we refer to the object as an "iron" (although modern versions are not made of that material) and the process is called "ironing."
The work of smoothing fabric has often been referred to as "pressing" because one presses the iron on fabric to achieve the desired outcome. Interestingly, the tools have often been called "sad"-irons--not, however, a reflection of the feelings evoked by the work's drudgery. Rather, "sad," is a medieval word for "heavy," which accurately describes most of the irons. The added weight assists in the "pressing" of the cloth. Interestingly, heated smoothing irons have frequently been termed "flat-irons" although, as becomes clear later, many are not at all flat.
The solid, externally heated iron has gone through a long history of modifications. An early improvement replaced the iron handle with a wooden one. This made "handling" the iron somewhat cooler because the wood did not retain heat as easily. However, while the iron was heating on the stove, the wooden handle sometimes charred, thus weakening the handle's structure. Furthermore, women often wrapped cloth around their knuckles to protect them from rising heat while ironing. Julie Dittrich patented one solution to the problem in 1866. She proposed a leather heat deflector or shield suspended from a detachable handle (figure 6). It is noteworthy that the manufacturer of the Anna Niffeler charcoal-heated tailor's iron (cited earlier) also included a heat shield between the handle and the grip.
Surely the most popular sad-iron available is the double pointed iron with detachable handle patented by Mary Florence Potts. (Figure 1,2,7,S) The iron was manufactured by many companies in the United States, Canada, and Eurone. It became the standard of the industry and certainly the most popular sad-iron ever made.
The body of the Potts iron was cast hollow (rather than solid) and the bottom had a thicker layer of iron than the sides. It was filled with material that was a non-conductor of heat, such as plaster of paris, cement, or clay. Consequently, not as much heat would radiate up as from earlier irons. Potts also claimed in her 1870 U.S. patent (reissued in 1880) that her iron held the heat longer so that more articles could be ironed without reheating the iron. Another advantage of this solid one-piece double-pointed sad-iron was that one could iron in either direction. A rounded handle made the tool more comfortable for the wrist.
Mary Potts' masterpiece was the detachable handle patented in 1871 (reissued in 1872 and 1879). She designed a mechanism that permitted the user to place the iron on a hot stave and remove the handle so that the handle would stay cool. Indeed, it, was easy then to heat several bases at once, pick up the base which was most hot--or even one of a different size, more appropriate for the task--and continue to-work with the cool handle.
Potts' inventions were licensed to many companies, and even after the patents had elapsed, the products continued to be manufactured throughout the world--well into the twentieth century. Her irons are still in use in areas of Africa and other locations where electricity is not available.
The Potts irons with their separate and replaceable handles became so popular that by 1891, special machines were invented that could produce twelve to fifteen thousand semicircular wood handles in a single day rather than the three or four hundred handles produced daily with earlier technology. Many men received patents for base and handle adaptations. For example, patents were granted f or charcoal, gas, and electrically heated irons, all having Potts' detachable handle. The man receiving the charcoal iron patent even states, "The construction and operation of the detachable handle is well known as the Potts sad-iron and need not be described more fully." As late as 1920, a design patent was granted to a man for a carved design on Potts' handle (Swanson, 1988) .
Thanks to research by Edna Glissman, we can paint a fuller, more human story of this important inventor. We see a 17-year-old Mary Webber married to Joseph Potts. She was 18 when she gave birth to a son and only 19 years old when she received the first of her patents. The inventor had special access to the problem because as we learn from the Saturday Herald, Ottumwa, lowa, May 27, 1899,
wash day with its sequel of 'ironing' was to Miss Mary, as to many other daughters of Eve, a time of tribulation. That old iron with its solid metal handle, needing always a 'holder', and then scorching the clothes and scorching the hand was a nuisance.
Young Mary also had access to a special skill that might provide a solution. Her father was a plasterer who must have taught Mary a trick or two. The Herald reports that Mary "would try an experiment . . . :
A paste board rim was prepared and put around the top of the iron, and then the inclosure filled with plaster paris. That protected the hand from the heat. Then it seemed to her that the shape of the iron could be improved. And lastly the iron handle was disposed and replaced with a wooden, detachable handle. Such was the invention.
Specialty irons provide special insight into the interesting detours of technology and the amazing ingenuity of inventors. One learns that invention often follows the dictates' of fashion.
The goffering iron may have been in use by the Greeks as early as the 4th century BC. It was certainly popular in 16th century Europe, where it shaped the intricate ruffles and tucks that abounded at the time (figure 9). An upright stand held one or more cylinders closed at one and (figure 10).
A heated poker-like iron was inserted into the open and of the barrel and when sufficiently warm, the duly starched material to be treated would be smoothed over the barrel with the fingers, one tuck at a time. Indeed a long and tedious process (Jewell, 1977).
Fluting irons and fluting "machines" are direct descendants of the goffering iron. Using heat and pressure, the principle of traditional flat-irons, these devices could make multiple pleats more efficiently. In 1866, when fluting, ruffles, and flounces (made of lace or of the same fabric as the dress) were popular, trimmings on women's dresses, Henrietta Cole was granted a U.S. patent for an improvement in fluting devices which was sold both as a table model and as a smaller, more portable "pony" (figure 11). The patent was reissued in 1887.
On April 3, 1866, Susan R. Knox was granted a U.S. patent with William Corrister for a fluting machine. Later in 1866 another patent for fluting machine improvements was granted to Susan Knox exclusively. Both patents were reissued in 1870 (figure 13). The products were manufactured by several companies, including the Knox manufacturing company or New York City. Evidently the device was a huge success for a long time, because Mrs. Knox was granted a trademark for her fluter in 1877. She described the trademark, a picture of Knox, as "A likeness of myself, with fac-simile of my autograph signature across the bottom, thereof" (figure 12). The trademark was placed in an oval casting on the base of the fluting machines.
During the 19th century, the fashion called for starched garments, such as shirts, to display a high sheen. Polishing irons, a variation on the traditional sad-iron, were invented for that purpose. The first patent granted in the United States for any type of iron was issued to Mary Ann Cook in 1848 for a Polisher (figure 14). The story of her patent illustrates the workings of the product as well as her special insight from personal experience.
Cook's patent recommends her improvement as especially useful for Smoothing and polishing starched shirt fronts. Apparently she had special knowledge of the problem and special insight to provide a solution:
Common . . . sad-irons . . . have only one flat ironing or plane surface. They are not well adapted to polishing or glazing starched shirt-bosoms or other articles . . . . Experience has taught me that a very high gloss or polish can only be successfully or practically effected by a small curved convex surface, one capable of retaining a suitable polishing-heat' while being used.
Her experience also showed Cook that in order to achieve greater pressure on the curved section of the iron and to provide greater wrist comfort, it was advantageous to place a downward angle on the wood handle--an early example of successful ergonomics. Apparently many were sold--and little wonder. Imagine the joy of owning an improved tool to make this onerous task a bit more tolerable.
Almost 50 years later, in 1896, Mary Sweeney patented further improvements on the polishing iron. Her patent describes the iron as "adapted to polishing shirt fronts" and lists several features, including the shape of the nose, which "has the advantage of permitting it to enter ruffles and other contracted openings." In 1899, continuing her creative response to her tasks, Sweeney received a design patent for a sleeve iron.
Puffed sleeves and other rounded surfaces which required smoothing from the inside presented special problems. Certainly the bustle presented a challenge that could not be met with the ordinary box- or flat-iron. special rounded irons were invented in the shape of balls, eggs, and mushrooms. These, too, can be considered the descendants of goffering irons. The handle often could be used as a stand while the "business. end" was heated or waiting to be used. Hilliners soon found uses for the rounded irons in shaping their hats.
The Tommy Iron makes for an interesting example of the rounded standing iron. Its story also illustrates how women have not always been credited with their inventions. A design patent and a trademark were issued in 1921 (figure 15), and a related utility patent was granted in 1922, both to Frederick E. Kern, for a shaping and ironing tool. Kern was not the inventor. Literature enclosed with later models of the tool states:
A woman, an expert millinery designer employed by a big St. Louis firm, sat down one day and designed a new kind of electric iron for modern clothes, an iron not encumbered by a clumsy handle, so that it could slip into small sized sleeves, shirred bands, and narrow lace ruffles. Not only that, but she added to it a special attachment which made it into an upright iron for pressing fine laces, velvets, and delicate embroideries, another revolutionary accomplishment. As the name of this clever inventor was Miss Bertha Thompson, her friends named the new iron the Tommy Iron, and the name stuck (Swanson, 1988).
This brief history has skipped the development of self-heating irons that used coal gas (natural gas), white gas (a variant of gasoline), or alcohol. For the sake of brevity, there is no mention of electric irons except for the Tommy Iron, which did use electricity as a source of heat. To illustrate woman's involvement in the more recent history of ironing, one can add Gertrude Gross, who, in 1953, patented an early version of an electric steam iron marketed as the Handy Iron (figure 16).
This brief history has ignored the development of the mangle, a history that spans at least 500 years. Household textiles, such as bed and table linens, have long been smoothed using this cold-pressing technique. The textile was first wound tightly around a wooden roller. Then, a board was used to push the roller back and forth against a table or other support while pressure was exerted.
As recently as 1893, Rosa Koenig was issued a patent for a mangle board, although such boards were by then no longer. in vogue. In her invention, the underside of the mangle board is corrugated to "prevent the bar from slipping on the roll" and to allow the operator to exert considerable pressure "without much effort" (figure 17). Koenig contended that this method of smoothing textiles was just as effective but less fatiguing than using the sad iron. Even now, upright industrial mangles with rollers are still in use and are still being improved. Interestingly, Rosa Koenig signed her patent with "her mark"--an X. While she could not write, she could invent.
It is clear that women have invented solutions to their problems, often finding better ways to accomplish their tasks, and occasionally finding ways to ease the drudgery of their work. Certainly women have not always received credit for their inventions. How many of their ideas were recorded by fathers, brothers, husbands, bosses--even patent agents? Interestingly, women sometimes receive credit where none is due. A Westinghouse advertisement, circa 1913, shows an iron with the slogan, "Women designed it! That's why the new Westinghouse electric iron is much better" (figure 18). While there is no evidence that women designed this particular iron, from a marketing perspective, the slogan makes sense. The consumer, a woman, would believe that because ironing is woman's work, women should be best equipped to improve women's tools.
Out of the Kitchen; Into the Lab
Woman must learn to contrive plots in which she's the actor, in which she struggles for control of her own destiny, slays her own dragons. She must learn to look at models for human action and say, "That action includes me" (Heilbrun, 1979).
Although, with appropriate training and opportunity, women have moved beyond the iron, it is important to note that improving irons was not trivial work. The inventions cited have made significant changes in the way women work and live. They have solved problems that women encountered in their daily lives. Nevertheless, some inventions, or series of inventions, make a spectacular difference. An example comes from the creativity of Ruth Benerito, a chemist, who, with her colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, worked during the 1960s and '70s 'to develop wash-and-wear cotton. Special treatment of the fiber affects its behavior during the drying process and helps make it wrinkle-resistant. There 's little reason to own an iron any more.
Well over !00,000 U.S. patents have been granted to American women. Most of them have nothing to do with ironing or with garments or even with fabric in the most general sense. This study of ironing is merely a case study, and one would do women a disservice if one did not acknowledge the full range of their inventive accomplishments. Many case studies are possible. Perhaps it is best to end this essay with the example of a true star. Women's inventions, 'Like those of men, range from the trivial to those worthy of Nobel Prizes. Perhaps the most important of women who have become Nobel Laureates is Gertrude Elion (figure 19). It is important to note that even her most dramatic discoveries were built on the prior science of others.
Triumphing over the obstacles of gender, Gertrude Elion shared, the 1988 Noble Prize in Medicine with George Hitchings, her collaborator for over 40 years. Elion's name appears on 45 patents and over 280 scientific publications, which reflect her many drug discoveries. Her breakthroughs are the result of the "enlightened empiricismn" :she shared with Hitchings, now called the "rational approach" to drug development, which replaced the reliance on a hit-or-miss process.
For years, pharmaceutical scientists were thwarted because virus and host cells share so many chemical processes. Drugs that can destroy one can usually destroy the other. Elion's long-standing interest in the obscure differences in nucleic acid synthesis between normal human calls, cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria, and viruses enabled her to recognize and develop a series of drugs which block nucleic acid synthesis of cancer cells and noxious organisms without damaging normal human cells--work that has had
particular significance in cancer and antiviral research. Consequently, E1ion brought about a "revolution in chemotherapy" when she. Synthesized thioguanine and 6-mercaptopurine (Purinethol), the earliest active agents against leukemia, ca. 1950, which led to the drugs that today are achieving 80% cure rates.
E1ion's effort to discover an improved anti-leukemic drug, demonstrated that azathioprine (Imuran), which she synthesized ca. 1957, worked as an anti-cancer drug, but no better than 6-MP. Imuran, however, blocked the immune response that triggers rejection of foreign tissue. That discovery was immediately applied to successful kidney transplants. "When you meet someone who has lived for 253 years with a kidney graft," says Elion, "there's your reward."
Elion and her team worked to understand why acyclovir was so successful as an anti-herpes agent. They discovered that the compound remains inert until the herpes virus, a kind of suicidal maneuver, converts the compound into a substance toxic to itself. This discovery was a true breakthrough in anti-viral research. "That such a thing was possible wasn't even imagined until then," says Elion. Released under the trade name Zovirax, ca. 1982, acyclovir is Burroughs Wellcome's (Elion's employer) single most profitable product.
Elion's metabolic studies contributed significantly to the successful development of allopurinol (Zyloprin) for the treatment, ca. 1963, of gout, one of mankind's most painful diseases. More recently, researchers who discovered AZT, a breakthrouah treatment for AIDS, used the Elion/Hitchings protocols and worked under their guidance.
Elion is a true star. She considers her recent election to the National Academy of Science of even greater import than her Nobel Prize because it reflects peer recognition of her contributions.
Epiloque
To the people in today's corporations, the entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, the visionaries, the working mothers, the job sharers, the older people, the two-career couples, the nurturing managers, and all the others . . . who are re-inventing the corporation from the bottom up (Maisbitt, !985).
The evolution of the smoothing iron illustrates that technology is incremental. Rarely does one see a dramatic breakthrough. Inventions develop as improvements of prior inventions. As new technology becomes available it can be applied to existing products or processes. For example, the invention of electricity preceded, and led to, the invention of the electric iron.
The concept of incremental technology is important because tells us that an invention can be a small improvement. Most potential inventors are afraid to try because they believe that inventions require major and complex changes in technology. It is enough to improve a pencil by attaching an eraser to the end, or to affix a clip to allow the pencil to fasten onto a shirt pocket.
We began by asserting that teaching the skills of invention is relatively easy. It is difficult to motivate youngsters to become lifelong inventors--to take their skills out of the classroom and to apply them in the real worlds of work, play, and relationships. Students believe that invention is possible because, after all, It comes in small steps.
Finally, the evolution of the pressing iron illustrates that invention impacts on the way we work and play. The products of invention have a powerful and real influence on everyday behavior. Students must believe that invention is meaningful--it impacts on real lives and makes real changes in the way we live.
Picture Credits
Figure 1: Trade card owned by Edna Glissman.
Figures 2 & 8: Trade cards owned by Vi Swanson.
Figures 3, 4, 10: Brian Jewell, Smoothing Irons, Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Midas Books, 1-977.
Figure 9: Douglas A. Russell, Costume History and Style, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1983.
Figure 18: Glass slide owned by Jerry Fingerman.
Figure 19: Wellcome News, Burroughs Wellcome Co. , Special Nobel Prize Issue, 1988.
References
Thomas Bass, "The Real McCoy," TDC, October, 1990.
Nell DuVall, Domestic Technology: a Chronology of Developments, Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.
Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Reinventing Womanhood, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1979.
Meredith Hooper, Everyday Inventions, New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1972.
Brian Jewell, Smoothing Irons, Tunbridge Wells,.Kent: Midas Books, 1977.
Ian McNeil (ed.), An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology, London: Rutledge, 1990.
John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, Re-invenring the Corporation, New York: Warner Books, 1985.
Alex F. Osborn. Applied Imagination (Third Revised Edition), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963.
Douglas A. Russell, Costume History and Style, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1983.
Saturday Herald, Ottumwa, Iowa, May 27, 1899.
Violet Swanson, "Sad-Irons Invented by Women" (unpublished paper), 1988.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Patent and Trademark Office, "Buttons to Biotech," 1990.