Great Inventions! (By Women!) Many things we see or use in our everyday life did not exist until someone invented them. That "someone" was sometimes a woman. Women in the 19th and early 20th century sought to make life easier out of necessity. With the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and early 20th century and the World Wars that defined history, women answered the call to be more and do more. Here are just a few things that came out of girl power and brains. 1863 Clarissa Britain, improvements in ambulances and boilers 1864 Mary Jane Montgomery, improvements in locomotive wheels 1864 Sarah P. Mather, submarine telescope 1865 Temperance P. Edson, self-inflator for raising sunken vessels 1871 Augusta M. Rodgers, car heater 1873 Maria L. Ghirardini, rails for street railways 1879 Mary E. Walton, locomotive and other chimneys and an elevated railway 1881 1880 Mafia E. Beasley, a life raft 1887 Anna Connelly, fire escape 1887 Hannah Harger, screen door 1892 Sarah Boone, ironing board 1899 Letitia Geer, medical syringes 1902 Mary Anderson, windshield wiper 1903 Mary Anderson, window cleaning device 1912 Carrie B. Averill, baby carrier 1917 El Dorado Jones, exhaust attachment for gas engines 1917 Ida R. Forbes, electric hot water heater 1930 Ruth Wakefield, chocolate chip cookie 1938 Katherine Burr Blodgett, nonreflecting glass 1953 Gertrude Elion, drug for treating leukemia and kidney transplant rejection 1956 Patsy O. Sherman, Scotchgard 1957 Bette Nesmith Graham, Liquid Paper 1959 Evelyn Berezin, data processing system 1961 Phyllis Hersh, bi-directional magnetic tape 1962 Jean H. Clark, linear discriminator circuit 1971 Ema S. Hoover, feedback control monitor for stored program data processing system 1973 Giuliana C. Tesora, modification of reactive hydrogen containing polymer 1978 Barbara S. Askins, method of obtaining intensified images from developed photographic films and plates 1986 Margaret Grimaldi, space shuttle escape pole 1991 Eve Abrams Wooldridge, device to measure space contamination The next time you look around your house, school, or a store consider how women played a role in what you see.