KiteCD
Women Inventors
Margaret Knight
Born 1838
Died 1914
Born in 1838 in Maine, Margaret Knight showed an interest in machinery even as a young girl. At the age of twelve Knight went to the cotton cloth mill where her brothers worked in New Hampshire. While she was there an accident occurred which severely injured a worker. Concerned for the safety of the workers, she returned home determined to make the mill a safer place. She created a device that stopped the action on the machines at the mill should something go wrong. The mill owners put her invention to work immediately.
Paper bags have been around for hundreds of years. They have been used for many different things. Even the famous artist Pablo Picasso painted pictures on them. For a long time these bags did not have square bottoms and they were cut and glued by hand. Later a paper feeding machine was made which greatly improved their production. However, it wasn’t until Margaret Knight invented an improvement to the paper bag machine that the bag we recognize today was made. Knight worked to develop machinery that would produce a square bottom to the bag gluing it automatically. She succeeded in 1867 at the age of twenty-nine.
Before her death in 1914 Margaret Knight had received 27 patents including advancements in shoe manufacturing machinery, new window designs, improvements to tin can productions, and a "silent" automobile motor.
Try the activity "Paper Bag Play"
and come up with your own ideas for using a paper bag.
Books for Children
- Brainstorm! The Stories Of Twenty American Kid Inventors by Tom Tucker - This book is inspirational for children 10 years and older. It highlights the success of inventions by children and real patents they have earned in short interesting biographies. One of the biographies included is Margaret Knight.
( amazon.com has it)
Links
- The Margaret Knight Page
at The Inventors Museum and Alliance for American Innovation has an interesting biography
as well as a page for women inventors.
- The inventors page at Girl Tech Online is a site geared for girls 8 years and older. It offers lots of fun activities, more to read about women inventors, and if you are a belong to the Girl Scouts of America, this site has information about how to earn a Girl Tech Girl Scout Patch. The Girl Tech company was started by Janese Swanson
and is meant to encourage girls to invent and explore technology.
Stephanie Louise Kwolek
Born July 31, 1923
Died -
Stephanie Louise Kwolek was born on July 31, 1923 in Kensington, Pennsylvania. She was always interested in natural sciences and medicine. She graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1946 with a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology. Kwolek obtained a job at Dupont Chemicals in Buffalo, New York and planned to continue her education as soon as she had earned enough money to attend.
At Dupont she worked creating polymers, new types of plastics, and was successful in making many previously unknown types. Her goal was to continually invent stronger and stiffer polymer fibers. Then in 1964 she created a new substance five times stronger than steel. This new polymer was named Kevlar. Kevlar was first marketed in 1971. As a lightweight,
extremely strong material Kevlar has proven to have many applications. It is used to make bullet-resistant vests, skis, tires, tennis rackets, fiber optic cables, helmets, and even pieces of space crafts.
Kwolek retired from Dupont in 1986. At the time of her retirement she had earned 17 patents and continued to consult for the Dupont company. She been recognized with several honors including receiving the National Medal of Technology and in 1999 she won the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award.
Make your own plastic like substance with the activity Making Plastic and find out for yourself some of the characteristics of a polymer.
Links
More Inventors
- The National Inventor's Day special feature has more inventors.
- Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but did you know that his research grew out of an aid for the hearing impaired?
- George Washington Carver contributed greatly to the agricultural sciences and created many products from plants, in particular the peanut.
- Thomas Edison was not the first person
to experiment with electric light, but he found out how to
increase the life of a bulb so it would be commercially practical.
- Orville and Wilbur Wright built the plane that stayed aloft for 12 seconds on its first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.
- Benjamin Franklin is well known for his experiments with kites, but he also invented the Franklin stove which improved household heating by sending the heat out into the room instead of up the chimney.
- Elijah McCoy, in the Black History Month special feature for February, invented an oil cup for lubricating trains that was so much better than all others that people began asking for "the real McCoy".
More Women in History
- Women In History - Page 2
- Keller, Hellen, struck blind and deaf by illness as an infant
she went on to read, write, speak, and become politically active as an adult.
- Roosevelt, Eleanor, as First Lady of the United States she struggled to gain civil
rights for all people in all nations, and became known as the First Lady of the World.
- Women In History - Page 3
- Sacagawea, as a young Shoshone woman she was the only female to travel
on the Lewis and Clark expedition. She served as a guide and interpreter.
- Sullivan, Annie, almost blind herself, she became the teacher and companion to
a blind and deaf child teaching her to communicate with the outside world.
- Women in Black History
- Ruby Bridges attended an first grade at an all white school in 1960, accompanied by federal marshals.
- Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. This resulted in a year-long boycot of the bus company by the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama.
- Harriet Tubman was known as "Moses", helping over 300 slaves escape to the north on the underground railroad.
Activities
home
About KiteCD
®
Problems? Questions? Contact webmaster.
AMAZON.COM is the registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.