The Right to Invent and Profit

This week, librarians, booksellers, and readers every where are celebrating the right to read by observing "Banned Book Week"--Sept 24-Oct 2. According to the American Library Association, "Banned Book Week" underscores each American's right to "intellectual freedom."

It's not likely, that my book, The Right Sisters: Women Inventors Tell Their Stories, will be banned. However, my motivation in part for writing The Right Sisters stemmed from discovering how women were once banned from getting patents for their inventions. In other words, they were denied the intellectual freedom to invent and profit from their creations.

In 1793, Sybilla Masters invented a corn refining machine. However, the patent for her method was issued in her husband’s name. The paperwork actually reads: for “a new Invencon [sic] found out by Sybilla, his wife.” In the early days of this country, women’s rights were overshadowed by those of men. The cultural norm at that time dictated that a woman’s place was in the home.

By the late 1800s, women were finally granted patents for their inventions, but as the stories in The Right Sisters relate, our journey toward intellectual freedom and enterprise continues to be challenged even in the 21st century. Last week, I wrote a blog post about the challenges women face when negotiating with big companies. That's why organizations like Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and web sites like Women Negotiating are necessary resources for women.

Just as librarians and booksellers work to maintain our freedom to choose what we read, these organizations work to maintain women's rights in the world of business. We have a right to invent and a right to profit.

Let's celebrate our right to intellectual freedom. Post a comment about a challenge you faced head on to secure your rights.

Break the Rules

When I was first getting started, I accidentally broke rules because I didn't know better. For instance, when I went to my first trade show, I didn't even have a booth. I just went dressed in whiteboard costume with my product in little bags and started selling them.

Later, a mentor told me that breaking the rules could work in my favor. But I already knew this from my adventure at the trade show.

Of course, you have to be smart when you break the rules. In other words, you can't be offensive or insensitive. You also have to be lawful. One way that I break rules is by approaching some of the unspoken rules playfully.

For example, one of my rule breaking escapades was recently featured on the blog Women Negotiating.

A supposedly smart person told me that I could not sell my product to a big box retailer without a man accompanying me to negotiating table. So when I managed to get an appointment to present my product, I glued a large photo of a man's to a Popsicle stick so I would have a man with me. This tactic got a big laugh AND landed me the deal.

What kinds of rules have you broken in order to get what you want and need for your product. If you are not a rule breaker and you want to learn how to get what you want, check out the Women Negotiating website for lots of great ideas.

Writing & Inventing

Last week I retreated to a cabin in the High Sierra, with my co-writer Patricia Harrelson, to work on The Right Sisters. It was an energetic, productive, and at times, comical experience.

We immersed ourselves in the lives of eight women inventors, reviewing transcriptions of our interviews with them, researching and fact checking key points, talking in depth about the common and unique themes among them, and eventually reading and revising the drafts we have written of their chapters. What occurred to me as we worked was how similar the writing process is to the inventing process.

The are both creative endeavors that require deep and meaningful attention and action. Patricia and I talked at length about each inventor. We hiked to the river and to a giant rock pile, notebooks in hand so we could record the insights that came to us. We stretched our bodies in yoga poses and our understanding of each woman deepened. I remember the talking, thinking, walking, and stretching that went into developing KleenSlate and my erasers and paddles.



A little humor is essential to both processes. Our cabin was funky. It was very old and tilted on the foundation, so we slept and wrote on an angle. A skunk family had nested under the cabin all winter, so that during the heat of midday a pungent scent wafted through the floorboards. At night, we had a regular visitor, a critter who made a rukus in the little kitchen, nibbling on fruit we'd left on the table and knocking pans off the stove. These discomforts seemed to feed our process rather than detract from it. We giggled at our cockeyed computers sitting on the table and shone flashlights into the kitchen at night trying to "catch" the critter in its beam.



We never caught sight of him, but we caught much more. The essence and flavor of the women inventors who have so wholeheartedly shared their stories with us. It is going to be a GREAT BOOK!

Google Alert for Women Inventors

I'm always interested in anything that has to do with women inventors. In fact, I have a Google Alert set for anything connected to inventors in general and women inventors in particular. (check out Google Alerts to stay on top of news in your field)

That's how I learned about WOMENTORZ a website scheduled to launch in six weeks. Their site is designed to build a network of women inventors. In fact, they are advertising for help with beta testing.

I don't know these gals, but I sure like their idea. Check out the site and decide for yourself if it is something you want to pursue.

Name Three Inventors

“Name three inventors,” I asked of my 8th grade language arts class more than 10 years ago when I was still teaching.

Hands went up and I called on students, who named Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the Wright Brothers—well known inventors. I wanted the students to dig deepr, so I said “Name a woman inventor.” Not a single hand went up despite the fact that they all knew that I had invented the attachable erasers I was using on the whiteboard. After a moment, one student raised his hand. “Yes, Steven,” I said.

“I don’t think there are any women inventors,” he said.

My mouth dropped open; I was speechless. Though I’d often told the kids about my adventures while inventing the eraser, Steven did not view me as an inventor. When I regained my voice and questioned the class further, it was clear that that none of them could name a female inventor. This simple question opened a much bigger one for me. I realized that I couldn’t really give a satisfying answer to my own question. I had met several women in the course of working to get my eraser patented, but I didn’t know of any women inventors beyond these few.

I decided that it was imperative that I be able to promptly answer this question myself, especially if I wanted my students to be able answer without hesitation. Research, however, offered a bleak picture. There were no books on the library shelves about women inventors. Further investigation revealed that few had been written. Then I stumbled upon a used copy of Mothers of Invention: From the Bra to the Bomb, Forgotten Women and Their Unforgettable Ideas written in 1988 by Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Ptacek.



The authors say in their Preface that they wrote the book as “attempt to resurrect from the cracks of history the names and stories of remarkable women who changed the world –and were promptly ignored by it.” From this fascinating and thoroughly researched book, I learned about Sybilla Masters who invented a corn refining machine in 1793. The patent was issued to her husband because women were not allowed file in their names back then. I learned that Margaret Knight invented the flat bottomed brown paper bag in 1870, a product still in use today. The book is filled with stories about women whose inventions range from practical to scientific, from frivolous to serious. The stories also describe the obstacles that women inventors have faced since the dawn of human history. Reading these stories was a true eye-opener. When Vare and Ptacek followed with a sequel in 2002 called Patently Female: for AZT to TV Dinners, Stories of Women Inventors and Their Breakthrough Ideas, I bought it immediately.


These books have motivated me to write my own book about women inventors: The Right Sisters. In future posts, I will tell you about the women inventors I’ve met on the pages of these books as well as in real life. I hope you’ll pass their stories along. My wish is that to expand reader's awareness so that if you are asked to name a woman inventor, you have names bursting forth: Marie Curie, Claire McCardell, Amanda Theodosia Jones, Kate Gleason, Wendy Steele, Julia Rhodes.