Birmingham age-herald., 1895-07-28
WOMANklND.

One of the most interesting features of the Alabama exhibit at the Atlanta ex- position will be the inventions by Ala bama women. This department has been placed in charge of Mrs. John P. Till man of Birmingham. and she will be glad to receive any information or sugges- tons. It is claimed by many that woman is the first and original inventor. Prof. Otis Mason, the anthropologist of the Ma tional Museum. has lately published book to show that primitive woman was the creator of almost all of our arts and industries, and that while her lord slept and fought she toiled and invented. Wo- men were the first farmers, the first tai lors, the first weaverS, the first shoe makers, the first basketmakers, the first tanners, pottery-makers, builders, bar bers and doctors. In word, as Profess sor Mason maintains, they are and all ways have been the industrial sex; in turbulent, drinking and warning age, the peaceful conservators of the elements of progress.
 Civilization, strange to say. until quite recent times, does not appear to have been propitious to the inventive genius of woman, or to it's exhibition; but that, perhaps, as a prominent writer would say, is another story. At any rate the fact remains that in this country the patent office had been established fully twenty years before any woman had the courage to apply for a patent on the fruit of her inspiration and labor That was in 1909. and Mrs. Mary Refs was the woman. The patent was for certain method of straw weaving with silk or thread, a valuable invention, which brought the plucly little woman about 1000. Six years later, says the record, ripple of excitement again f1uttered through the patent office, when Miss Mary Brush filed an application for a patent on a corset After due delibera- tion the desired protection was given July ?, 1915.
 From 1909 to 1929 eleven patents were issued to women, and during the twenty years succeeding just twice as many. From 1S49 to 1859 there was hardly any increase. But from this period, the first year of the war; dates the beginning of a remarkable activity-a real renaissance in the inventive faculties of women Up to the. present year more than 5000 pat ents have been issued to the women of the United States, of which all but forty nine have been issued in the last thirty five years.
 It is interesting to note the nature of these feminine inventions. their wide ap- plfcability even from the earlier time when woman's horizon was supposed to be bounded by the four walls of home and her interests confined chiefly to the adornment or her person. women nave patented almost everything, from sub marine telescopes to baby jumpers, from ice cream freezers to surgical splints. There are patents for weighing scales, military caps, nursing bottles, fire alarm thermometers, lifeboats, steam whistles, cotton pickers, improvements in war ves- sells, side saddles, steam boilers artificial flowers, siphon-propelling pumps, musi- cal watches, dolls grain elevators, pro- cesses for restoring facial symmetry and apparatus for guiding balloons. Noth- ing is wanting, and in scanning the list one is seized with fresh admiration for "her infinite variety" and the conviction that the new woman is after all but the own daughter of her mother.