WOMEN'S INVENTIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 174, 3 August 1901, Page 3

WOMEN'S INVENTIONS.

‘•When did women ever yet invent?” Tennyson risks contemptuously in the Princess, ami women have been inclined to accept the taunt ns unanswerable. But even English women have made numerous household inventions, especially in the nursery, while, as for the Americans, Miss E. L. Bank’s article on •• American Women as In, ventors” quite frees them from the charge of doing nothing but” mint old trails.” The Patent Office of Washington contains a list of their inventions arranged in chronological order. First on record is a straw and silk apparatus patented by Mrs Mary Kies, of Connecticut in ISO',). This was followed in the early years of the century by numerous feminine contrivances for weaving, spinning, sewing, and making women’s clothes ; then devices for cutting and fitting dresses, and I for improving the sewing machine, and for amusing children. At a laier period, when there was a rush of women into offices they patented many pens, pencils, and automatic erasers. One favorite machine invented by a Chicago lady is an automatic baby-jumper, a swing-like arrangement made of straps, cloth, wood, and wire, a sort of round harness with braces for arms when the baby

wants to stand up and an adjustable saddle if he prefers to be jumped sitting. This jumper can be tixed on to a tree outside or ' to a hook in the house by means of a coiled wire spring. lout the most useful and ingenious apparatus is the “ Combined washing machine and see-saw,” which is worked by children sitting on seats attached to the arms and moving the rotary clothes-holder while they are playing see-saw. We are told this is in great demand, and the American housekeeper who is so unfortunate as to have no

children of her own, hires her neighbours’ boys and girls to amuse themselves with the of see-saw washing. Clothes wringers were first invented by a negro charwoman of Washington, who sold her idea for less than £4. "Of late years women's inventive iaeulties have not been confined to the house-' hold, but have extended to all manner of

contrivances for both sexes or even for men alone. Amongst numerous other inventions are the combined bath tub and travelling bag of indiarubber, which can be utilised either for packing clothes or for bathing onesell while travelling; a combined trunk and couch, a combined pitchfork and rake, a i horse-detacher and brake, special car-heaters, smoke-hoods for steam-engines, a typewriter for the use of the blind, and a special elevated railway for carrying vegetables. If we could only summon up the shade of Tennyson and make him read the list, no doubt be would offer his humblest apologies to the sex he maligned.