Their most intensive activity has been observed in the United States, especially since with the founding of woman’s colleges and the opening of the universities, the education of the female sex became a more careful and broader one.
The U. S. Patent Office at Washington, D. C., has published “Lists of Women Inventors,” in three volumes, covering the period from 1790 to March 1, 1895. From these lists it appears that till 1849 only 32 inventions by women have been registered at the Patent Office. This number increased to 290 during the period from 1850 to 1870; during 1870–1890 to 2568, and up to 1910 to 7942. These numbers prove that with the increase of woman’s knowledge and with the closer contact with modern industrial life her inventive spirit has likewise developed. Also the inventions became more manifold. While prior to 1850 they were almost exclusively confined to dress and household, they now cover all fields of human activity.
This fact became most evident during the terrible years of the World War. Some time ago the “Women Lawyer Journal” reported that of all the many inventions registered since 1914, fifty per cent. have been entered by women. Among these inventions have been such for the better protection of soldiers and aeronauts as well as for the greater comfort of the wounded and crippled. Other inventions meant improvement in wireless telegraphy, gas masks, submarine boats and hundreds of other objects.
Just as hostile as had been the clergy to the admission of women to ecclesiastical office, so unwilling were many prejudiced scholars to admit women into the sacred realms of science. By hundreds of arguments they tried to prove the inability of women to do any deeply scientific work. They explained that the hard study would impair their health, their chances of marriage, and their true destination as mothers. Higher education would make women unfit for domestic life, and, besides, they would hardly produce anything of real scientific value.
If these learned gentlemen would have taken the trouble to make themselves somewhat more acquainted with the history of science they would have found the names of numerous women on record, who, at their time, were among the leaders in the most abstruse sciences. Several centuries before Christ Hellas as well as Rome had a number of brilliant female philosophers, among them =Damo=, the daughter of Pythagoras, who lived about 580–500 B. C. She was one of his favorite disciples, and to her the great savant entrusted all his writings, enjoining her not to make public all the secrets of his philosophy. This command she strictly obeyed, though tempted by large offers while she was struggling with poverty.