WOMEN INVENTORS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 23, 2 March 1942, Page 5

WOMEN INVENTORS

IMAGINATIVE AMERICAN

Miss Beulah Louise Henry,

American Avornan, is one of the country's foremost iiwentors, • and holder of more patents than any other woman. Miss Henry, a North Carolinian by birth, a New Yorker for adoption, docs not look at all like what you AA'ould expect a Avoman inventor to look like, says a Avriter in the journal This AVeek. She is blonde and reminds you a little of Mae West.

tfn< the past 20 yearsi has invented an incredible variety of new things—lypeAvriter equipment, dolls, umbrellas, valves for footballs, sewing machines, household gadgets, and toys. She has made a comfortable income from her sixty patents and hns tAVO iioav ready for marketing that are potential producers of a good-sized fortune. She has had no mechanical training and no soientfic background. She can detect a need for a neAV produce and has the ability to fill that need. These qualities, she thinks, are an inventor's most valuable assets. As a young girl in Raleigh, North Carolina, she planned her first invention. an ice cream freezer. Novelty Umbrellas She Avondc'red Avhv umbrellas did not haA'e detachable coA'ers sci that coloured silks could be used to match a lady's costume. Ripping the eoA r ering from an old umbrella; she used a nail to punch holes in the rib ends. Next, she made a soap model of the type of clasp necessary to hold the detachable covers in place. The first six umbrella makers to AA'hom she peddled her idea were not interested. The seventh was. He sold 40,000 dollars' worth of the novelty umbrellas in sixty days. Miss Henry maintains no forma! laboratory. She uses her New York apartment as a Avorkshop. Whenevei she gets an idea she makes a sketch. The next st6p is to make a model. Her models are masterpieces of hair pin mechanics. They are made of paper chips, adhesive tape, and plastic Avood, but they furnish ideas to guide a professional model-maker.

Inspiration comes from the usual contacts of everyday life. MiSs Henry noted the fingers of a stenographer smudged with the ink from carbon paper. Couldn't this be corrected? With wires and a spool she built an ingenious typewriter attachment. It

threads reels of carbon between extra sheets. Five original copies may be made with one impression. A test in a large office indicated that this device, Avhieh will soon be marketed. would- cut carbon paper costs GO ]wer cent. ===== 7s/,