Women pioneers whose inventions transformed our life


Today, we want to talk about women inventors without whom our life would not be precisely the way we know it: objects that remodelled the world that had existed up until that time! Throughout history, women have played a very active role in innovation and technology, inventing gadgets that have transformed our lives. They had ideas that ended up being revolutionary. These women’s discoveries altered the course of history forever.

Marie Curie

There is no more famous and widely recognised scientist in history as Marie Curie, the French physicist and chemist who had to defy the conventions of a whole country in order to devote herself to research, because women couldn’t go to university in those days. She discovered polonium and radium and coined, without going much further, the word “radioactivity”.

Beulah Louise Henry

She patented up to 110 inventions, which led to her being called “Mrs Edison”. Among others, the folding umbrella with interchangeable canopies, the ice-cream machine, dolls that spoke and moved their eyes, the typewriter that could give you four copies of the same document without having to use carbon paper.

Alice H. Parker

Until the year 1919, homes were heated with fires in hearths and stoves. But Alice H. Parker changed this by designing a centralised heating system that used natural gas as the source of combustion. Thanks to her, we have hot water and heating today.

Katherine Burr Blodgett

She was the first woman to receive the title of Doctor in Physics at the University of Cambridge. She was also the first woman to work in the General Electric Company. Her research led her to create the anti-reflective coatings used in making camera lens, computer screens or sunglasses.

Josephine Cochrane

She came from a wealthy social background and her house in Illinois was the venue for many parties. During the latter, her precious china dishes got chipped while being washed and she thought that a much better washing system was required. When she was left widowed, penniless and in-debt, she advanced her radical idea and invented an avant-garde machine: the first dishwasher.


Discovery magazine

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