This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about surprising people whose deaths have not been reported in the era in 1851.
From Beulah Henry was a child in the late 19th century, she dreamed of ways to make life easier. That impulse would ultimately drive her to secure dozens of patents and earn her the nickname: Lady Edison.
When she died in the early 1970s, she held far more patents than any other woman, and in 2006 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for her contributions to technological innovation, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office.
“I invent because I can't help with that,” she often said. “New things are piercing me.”
Her first prototype when she was nine years old was due to the mechanism that allowed men to tilt their hats to passersby while holding the newspaper at the same time.
The vision continued to come. In 1912, while she was in college, she received her first patent (1,037,762) for an ice cream maker, which was functioning with minimal ice. It was not a commercial success, but it did not stop her from dreaming of other innovations.
Patent number 1,037,762
“Ice cream freezer”
Toys, typewriters, sewing machines, coffee pots, hair curlers, can openers, mailing envelopes, everything seemed to be interested in her. Her achievements were even more surprising, as she had no knowledge of the mechanism and lacked the technical vocabulary to explain what she was trying to do.
Working in the series of hotel suites he visited, he described what he considered more like boudoirs than the location of business – hired a model maker, a draft man and a patent attorney to make her vision come true. Sometimes she would sell her ideas to manufacturers who applied for her patent.
Henry could see the finished product in her head, she said, “You look as clearly as a book, a picture or a flower holds up before you.” Her challenge was to communicate that vision clearly enough so that others could bring it to reality.
“I told the engineers, built that kind of thing on me, and they told me, 'Miss Henry, that didn't work,'” she told the Winston Salem Journal and the Sentinel in 1965.
Beulah Louise Henry was born on September 28, 1887 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her mother, Beura (Williamson) Henry, was an artist. Her brother, Payton, was a songwriter.
Henry claimed it was derived from Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States, and Patrick Henry, a hero of the Revolutionary War.
In an interview, she said the ability to invent may be influenced by a neurological condition called synesthesia, in which unrelated sensations are linked. “I have one million percent of it,” she says.
After graduating from Elizabeth University in Charlotte, North Carolina, she moved to New York City with her mother to pursue a career in invention.
One idea included a parasol with snap-on covers in various colors that could be changed to suit women's clothing. That wasn't an easy sell.
PatentNos. 1,492,725 and 1,593,494
“Parasol” and “Runner Shield Attachment”
One after the other, experts told her “I can't do that,” she was quoted as saying in the 1923 Raleigh News and Observers. “But I knew I could do that.”
The final result, described by the media as “the miracle of Smart Miradi,” was so popular that he founded a Henry umbrella and umbrella company to create and sell creations. Lord & Taylor displayed umbrellas in their windows and sold by thousands.
For a while, Henry made her energy a reinvention of children's toys, mainly dolls. She used springs and tubes to kick them, blink and cry. She puts the radio inside one. Her most popular work was Miss Iljong Doll, whose eyes changed colour to match the wig. She also created a gorgeous toy cow called Milkhamoo. Mirkamu dispensed milk and had a secret compartment of soap bars.
She then turned to the typewriter. Of the ten related patents she received, the most impressive one is probably the “protograph” (No. 1,874,749), an attachment that makes multiple copies of the document without carbon paper.
She “just look at something,” Henry said, “and then think, 'There's a better way to do it,' and the idea comes to me. ”
In 1941, she looked at the sewing machine for a long time and invented the double chain stitch sewing machine (No. 2,230,896).
She also found ways to make cooking easier. For years she said, “The coffee pot percolator told me, 'I'll do something with me,' but I didn't know what. And one day, when I was tasting the roast, I knew what I had to do with the percolator. ”
She continued: “I solved the device that permeates juice on a roaster and continually beats meat on its own.” She received a patent in 1962.
The reporter portrayed her in enthusiastic terms: pointed out that she was “a wonderful, commanding person.” “I wore a gown stylishly,” another said — “fun, almost theatrical feminine,” “like an opera star more than a researcher.”
Visitors who visited her for work in her hotel room often detected the whims of incense, mentioning her pink lampshade or the large telescope she placed near the window so that she could stare at the night sky. Then there was a pet. At various times she had a small turtle, a paraquito, a tropical oriole, several pigeons and cockatiels, and a cat named Chickadie.
Henry worked for the American Museum of Natural History, the National Audubon Society, the Women's League for Women's Animals, and the New York Microscopy Association. She has never been married.
Her distant inspiration was a mystery to her mother.
“I don't know what to make her,” her mother said in 1923.
Henry provided a mysterious account of her enforcement.
“I came to believe in spirit control,” she told the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington in 1939.
She was 85 years old, who died in February 1973, and her 49th final patent (its nature is lost in time) was pending.
