The Paper Trail: Ten Black Women, Ten Inventions, and the Price of Being Remembered

Gabrielle Birchak/ February 24, 2026/ Late Modern History, Modern History/ 0 comments

Today on Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! I fol­low ten Black women inven­tors. Some left thick paper trails, stamped with patent num­bers and fil­ing dates. Some left only frag­ments, a quo­ta­tion in a small pub­li­ca­tion. This rumor hard­ened into leg­end, a machine that appeared on the mar­ket with some­one else’s name attached. And as we fol­low their records, a pat­tern emerges: the patent was nev­er the fin­ish line. It was a door, and behind it sat the more com­plex ques­tions, such as who gets cred­it, who gets paid, who gets pushed to the mar­gins, or, worse yet, erased.

In much of his­to­ry, inven­tion sound­ed like a sin­gle thun­der­clap. One lone genius, one bright day, one tri­umphant patent.

But in real life, inven­tion usu­al­ly hap­pened in kitchens, board­ing hous­es, salons, clin­ics, and on night shifts. It hap­pened when a per­son looked at an every­day prob­lem and refused to accept it as “just how things were.”

Ellen Eglin and the invention that cleaned America, but not her reputation

If you want­ed a sin­gle scene for how inno­va­tion could van­ish, you could start with laundry.

In the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, laun­dry was a grind­ing cycle of soak­ing, scrub­bing, boil­ing, rins­ing, and then the part that pun­ished your hands and wrists the most: twist­ing wet cloth until it sur­ren­dered some of its water.

Around 1888, Ellen Eglin, a Black woman work­ing as a domes­tic ser­vant in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., invent­ed an improved clothes wringer. This device pressed water out through rollers. It was the kind of inven­tion that did not sound glam­orous. It sound­ed like relief. It sound­ed like time returned to the body.

But the sto­ry of Eglin’s inven­tion did not resolve into a patent with her name print­ed across the top. Instead, the sto­ry is very vague, and the sur­viv­ing “paper trail” relied on a small­er, more pre­car­i­ous kind of record: a short pub­li­ca­tion asso­ci­at­ed with women inven­tors, called the Woman Inven­tor, writ­ten by Char­lotte Smith in 1890. There is no exist­ing patent in Eglin’s name, as a result the infor­ma­tion we have on her is secondhand.

Accord­ing to Smith, Eglin sold her inven­tion for $18, pos­si­bly to C. Wheller Jr., explain­ing that if the pub­lic knew a Black woman had patent­ed it, white cus­tomers would not buy it.

That line lingers with heart­break because it tells us that the mar­ket­place does not mere­ly price inven­tions; it prices inventors.

So, with Eglin, what changed was not only the tech­nol­o­gy; it was also the les­son: when the offi­cial record is miss­ing or trans­ferred, you have to read the silence as part of the sto­ry. Some­one made mon­ey from wringers; some­one scaled man­u­fac­tur­ing; some­one put a prod­uct into the world. But the name most peo­ple did not learn was the per­son who began with the prob­lem and made the improve­ment, and that per­son was Ellen Eglin.

Judy W. Reed and the patent signed with an “X.”

In 1884, Judy W. Reed received a U.S. patent for an “improved dough knead­er and roller.” The patent described a machine that worked dough through inter­mesh­ing cor­ru­gat­ed rollers and then rolled it through plain rollers, aim­ing for more even mix­ing and clean­er handling.

It was an inven­tion root­ed in bread, labor, and rep­e­ti­tion. And it came from a woman whose life was, in many accounts, almost entire­ly swal­lowed by the archive. For Reed, the patent itself became the biography.

Lat­er arti­cles empha­sized that she signed with an “X,” a detail that became a sym­bol in its own right. It was a legal mark that said, “this was mine,” even when the sur­round­ing records did not pre­serve her voice in any pos­si­ble way.

Who got the mon­ey? The patent record did not guar­an­tee that answer. A patent could be a shield, but it could also be a thin sheet of paper held up against a strong wind. The prac­ti­cal impact superced­ed the finan­cial effect: Reed’s design belonged to a world of indus­tri­al­iz­ing kitchens and com­mer­cial bak­ing, where effi­cien­cy became prof­it even if Reed nev­er saw the returns.

How­ev­er, what changed because of her was not only dough, but also the prece­dent. Her name sat in the patent books, which was proof that Black women were not mere­ly work­ing inside Amer­i­can indus­try; they were reshap­ing it.

Sarah E. Goode and the bed that folded into a desk

If Reed’s inven­tion lived in the kitchen, Sarah E. Goode’s lived in the archi­tec­ture of crowd­ed cities.

In 1885, Goode received a U.S. patent for a cab­i­net bed. This design fold­ed up to reclaim floor space and trans­formed into a func­tion­al piece of fur­ni­ture when not in use.

The paper trail here grew rich­er. Beyond the patent itself, the Nation­al Archives’ edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als described a file that includ­ed spec­i­fi­ca­tions, draw­ings, amend­ments, and cor­re­spon­dence. That mat­tered because it showed inven­tion as a process, not a light­ning strike. It showed revi­sions, clar­i­fi­ca­tions, and nego­ti­a­tion, the slow shap­ing of an idea into some­thing leg­i­ble to an institution.

Goode’s inven­tion answered a spe­cif­ic social real­i­ty: peo­ple lived in small apart­ments; space was not an abstract con­cept; it was the dif­fer­ence between com­fort and strain. A bed that fold­ed away did not just save space; it changed how a room could behave.

And yet, even with a stronger doc­u­men­tary record, the finan­cial sto­ry remained dif­fi­cult to pin down. Patents did not auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late into man­u­fac­tur­ing pow­er. A per­son could see a need, solve it, even secure legal recog­ni­tion, and still watch oth­ers with the finan­cial means scale the solu­tion and man­u­fac­ture them all at once.

How­ev­er, what changed with Goode’s patent was the expec­ta­tion that domes­tic life could be engi­neered, and that a Black woman could do the engineering.

Sarah Boone and the sleeves of an era

In 1892, Sarah Boone received a U.S. patent for an improved iron­ing board.

It was nar­row­er than many boards that came before; it was designed with the details of cloth­ing in mind, par­tic­u­lar­ly sleeves and fit­ted gar­ments. Boone’s patent read like a qui­et rebel­lion against the idea that “women’s work” was not tech­ni­cal. The iron­ing board was a tool, yes, but it was also geom­e­try. It was sur­face, curve, and sup­port. It was a device shaped by how fab­ric actu­al­ly behaved.

A Con­necti­cut his­to­ry account lat­er not­ed some­thing blunt and reveal­ing: it was unknown whether Boone ben­e­fit­ed finan­cial­ly from the patent.

And this is the recur­ring truth: the inven­tion could be real, the patent could be real, but the mon­ey could still go missing.

What changed because of Boone was sub­tle but wide­spread. The iron­ing board became stan­dard­ized, and improve­ments like hers helped make the tool more effec­tive for the wardrobes peo­ple actu­al­ly wore.

Alice H. Parker and the house that warmed by zones

In 1919, Alice H. Park­er received a U.S. patent for a heat­ing fur­nace design.

Her con­cept used nat­ur­al gas and includ­ed mul­ti­ple burn­ers with indi­vid­ual con­trols, a step toward what lat­er gen­er­a­tions would rec­og­nize as zone heat­ing. Accord­ing to the Lemel­son-MIT Inven­tor archive, Parker’s patent was not the first gas fur­nace. Still, it was dis­tinc­tive for its mul­ti­ple, inde­pen­dent­ly con­trolled units.

If Eglin’s inven­tion spoke to labor in the home, Parker’s spoke to sur­vival in it. Heat­ing was not dec­o­ra­tive. In win­ter, it was the line between safe­ty and risk.

Did Park­er prof­it? The record did not offer an easy vic­to­ry sto­ry. Her thor­ough design was not wide­ly imple­ment­ed as writ­ten because there were con­cerns about how the heat flow was reg­u­lat­ed. Regard­less, Park­er had laid the foun­da­tion for this idea, which became a valu­able pre­cur­sor to build­ings with heat­ing and cool­ing zones and acces­si­ble thermostats.

But what changed was the con­cep­tu­al land­scape. Park­er helped push for­ward the idea that com­fort could be con­trolled room by room, that a house could be man­aged with pre­ci­sion instead of endured with resignation.

Marjorie Stewart Joyner and the patent assigned to a company

By the 1920s, inven­tion also lived in the salon.

Mar­jorie Stew­art Joyn­er devel­oped a per­ma­nent wav­ing machine and, in 1928, filed for a patent. The Nation­al Archives fea­tured her peti­tion and high­light­ed the prac­ti­cal spark: she exper­i­ment­ed with rods, heat, and ways to cre­ate waves more efficiently.

Her patent doc­u­ment car­ried a detail that mat­tered for the sto­ry of mon­ey: it list­ed her as the inven­tor. How­ev­er, she assigned the patent’s rights to the Madam C. J. Walk­er Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pa­ny, where she worked as a Nation­al Supervisor.

Joyner’s career was influ­en­tial. She trained stu­dents, super­vised beau­ty schools, and helped shape the pro­fes­sion­al world around Black beau­ty cul­ture. Yet the assign­ment meant that “cred­it” and “con­trol” were not iden­ti­cal. The pub­lic could remem­ber an inven­tor while the legal sys­tem fun­neled prof­it and own­er­ship elsewhere.

What changed because of Joyn­er was enor­mous. The tech­nol­o­gy of hair styling shift­ed. Time in the salon changed. Labor changed. Beau­ty cul­ture, already a seri­ous eco­nom­ic engine, gained new machin­ery, and Joyner’s work sat near the heart of it.

Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner and the invention that arrived before the market was ready to respect her

Mid-cen­tu­ry inven­tions often arrived in the space between bod­i­ly real­i­ty and pub­lic silence.

Mary Beat­rice David­son Ken­ner received a patent in 1956 for a san­i­tary belt designed to secure­ly sup­port san­i­tary pads. It was a prac­ti­cal inven­tion aimed at com­fort and reli­a­bil­i­ty, and it pre­dat­ed the adhe­sive prod­ucts that lat­er dom­i­nat­ed the market.

The Lemel­son-MIT pro­file described anoth­er part of Kenner’s expe­ri­ence, which was that a com­pa­ny showed inter­est in mar­ket­ing her idea, and then with­drew when they dis­cov­ered she was Black.

In oth­er words, she faced a prob­lem beyond engi­neer­ing; she faced a mar­ket that treat­ed race as a dis­qual­i­fy­ing factor.

How­ev­er, Ken­ner did not stop at one patent. She went on to patent addi­tion­al inven­tions, includ­ing devices con­nect­ed to mobil­i­ty aids and house­hold con­ve­nience. Her life under­scored a truth the patent office nev­er promised to solve: you could be pro­lif­ic and still be denied the social machin­ery that turned ideas into wealth.

What changed because of Ken­ner was not only a device, but a lin­eage. Her work sat in the long his­to­ry of women solv­ing health and com­fort prob­lems that were often treat­ed as unwor­thy of pub­lic atten­tion until some­one else mon­e­tized them at scale.

Bessie Blount Griffin and the invention dismissed at home, welcomed abroad

Bessie Blount Griffin’s inven­tions grew out of care. Grif­fin was quite an accom­plished indi­vid­ual. She was a bril­liant inven­tor, foren­sic sci­en­tist, phys­i­cal ther­a­pist, nurse, and writer.

In 1948, she was a phys­i­cal ther­a­pist to Thomas Edison’s son, Theodore Edi­son. When she worked with injured vet­er­ans, she devised an appa­ra­tus that helped amputees feed them­selves. She had worked with Theodore to cre­ate a gad­get that would hold dis­pos­able eme­sis basins attached to the back of their neck. It allowed them to feed them­selves instead of rely­ing on some­one else.

The image was strik­ing: a per­son regain­ing inde­pen­dence one con­trolled mouth­ful at a time.

Her patent record was clear. In 1951, under the name Bessie Vir­ginia Grif­fin, she received U.S. Patent 2,550,554 for a “portable recep­ta­cle sup­port,” which enabled indi­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties to feed themselves.

But here the paper trail col­lid­ed with insti­tu­tion­al indif­fer­ence. Accounts described how the U.S. Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion showed no inter­est. Grif­fin even­tu­al­ly made her inven­tion avail­able to the French for use in their mil­i­tary hospitals.

So who got cred­it and mon­ey? The patent named her, how­ev­er, the adop­tion sto­ry com­pli­cat­ed every­thing else. She did not sim­ply lack recog­ni­tion; she faced a sys­tem will­ing to leave a valu­able tool on the table.

What changed because of Grif­fin was not just a device. It was the moral account­ing. Her sto­ry forced the lis­ten­er to con­front an ugly pos­si­bil­i­ty: some­times a soci­ety fails not because it lacks inno­va­tion, but because it refus­es to val­ue the innovator.

Though this piece is about her inven­tion, she was high­ly regard­ed for her work in foren­sic sci­ence. As a side note, in 1969, Bessie Blount Grif­fin began a sec­ond career in law enforce­ment, using insights from her reha­bil­i­ta­tion work to link hand­writ­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics to phys­i­cal health and pub­lish­ing a tech­ni­cal paper on “med­ical graphol­o­gy.” That research quick­ly led to foren­sic doc­u­ment work for police depart­ments in Vir­ginia and New Jer­sey, and she lat­er served as chief exam­in­er for the Portsmouth, Vir­ginia, police depart­ment until Vir­ginia cen­tral­ized doc­u­ment exam­i­na­tion in 1972. In 1977, Scot­land Yard invit­ed her to Lon­don for advanced study in graphol­o­gy. After return­ing, she ran her own foren­sic con­sult­ing busi­ness for about twen­ty years, exam­in­ing doc­u­ments includ­ing pre–Civil War slave papers. So, yeah, she was a shero!

Marie Van Brittan Brown and the home security system that became an industry

In 1966, Marie Van Brit­tan Brown, a nurse in Queens, worked irreg­u­lar hours in a neigh­bor­hood where she felt unsafe. The police response was slow. She want­ed a way to see who stood out­side her door and to com­mu­ni­cate with­out open­ing it.

That need became an invention.

Brown and her hus­band, Albert L. Brown, designed a home secu­ri­ty sys­tem using tele­vi­sion sur­veil­lance, with a cam­era mech­a­nism, a mon­i­tor, and two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion. They filed in 1966 and received U.S. Patent 3,482,037 in 1969.

Here, the paper trail was both tech­ni­cal and haunt­ing. The patent described the sys­tem in metic­u­lous, mechan­i­cal detail. It even ges­tured toward fea­tures that lat­er became famil­iar, like the idea of for­ward­ing video to a remote location.

But the finan­cial sto­ry did not resolve into suc­cess. Lat­er report­ing described how Brown nev­er saw her sys­tem ful­ly real­ized in her life­time, even as the broad­er idea of home sur­veil­lance evolved into a sprawl­ing industry.

What changed because of Brown was the gram­mar of the front door. She helped pull the home into a new rela­tion­ship with cam­eras and screens, a rela­tion­ship that lat­er gen­er­a­tions expand­ed far beyond what she ini­tial­ly need­ed: a mea­sure of safe­ty, a lit­tle con­trol, a way to look with­out being seen.

Her lega­cy car­ried an irony. An inven­tion born from vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty became, over time, part of a world where sur­veil­lance could be mar­ket­ed as secu­ri­ty, even when it raised new harms and new ques­tions about who was watched and who felt protected.

Valerie Thomas and the illu­sion that traveled

Not every inven­tion addressed a house­hold prob­lem direct­ly. Some dis­cussed the shape of perception.

Valerie Thomas worked at NASA and devel­oped image-pro­cess­ing sys­tems. In 1980, she received a patent for an “illu­sion trans­mit­ter,” U.S. Patent 4,229,761. The device used con­cave mir­rors and video trans­mis­sion to pro­duce a three-dimen­sion­al illu­sion at a distance.

In a sense, Thomas engi­neered won­der. She built a bridge between a real object and a remote expe­ri­ence of it.

Who got cred­it? The patent named her. Her pro­fes­sion­al record also car­ried insti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion, and the Lemel­son-MIT pro­file not­ed her NASA career and the con­tin­ued inter­est in the concept.

Who got mon­ey? As with many tech­ni­cal patents, prof­it did not auto­mat­i­cal­ly attach to the inven­tor. Patents could be foun­da­tions for lat­er tech­nolo­gies with­out becom­ing per­son­al fortunes.

What changed because of Thomas was the imag­i­na­tive range of imag­ing. She helped make it eas­i­er to believe that depth could trav­el, that a “real-look­ing” image could step for­ward out of a sys­tem and occu­py space in front of you.

Patricia Bath and the medical device that carried her name into the patent books

Patri­cia Bath’s inven­tion lived in the oper­at­ing room.

She pio­neered work in oph­thal­mol­o­gy and devel­oped a tech­nol­o­gy asso­ci­at­ed with cataract treat­ment. In 1988, she received U.S. Patent 4,744,360 for an appa­ra­tus for ablat­ing and remov­ing cataract lenses.

In the USPTO’s own his­tor­i­cal sto­ry about Bath, the patent stood as a mile­stone: she became the first African Amer­i­can woman to receive a patent for a med­ical device, and her Laser­pha­co work influ­enced lat­er refinements.

Here, the paper trail was strong: patent doc­u­men­ta­tion, insti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion, and a clear link between inno­va­tion and patient outcomes.

The mon­ey sto­ry still required restraint. Med­ical inven­tions often moved through uni­ver­si­ties, hos­pi­tals, licens­ing agree­ments, and com­plex pro­fes­sion­al ecosys­tems. The more straight­for­ward truth was this: Bath’s inven­tion changed what was pos­si­ble for patients. It helped push cataract treat­ment toward less inva­sive, more pre­cise methods.

And it did some­thing else. It placed a Black woman’s name inside a realm that often tried to treat its heroes as if they sprang from only one demo­graph­ic, one tra­di­tion, one kind of body.

What the paper trail real­ly said

What did the paper trail real­ly tell us? The paper trail tells us that patents, tan­gi­ble proof of patents, don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fix injus­tice. They show some­thing more com­pli­cat­ed. There are so many more black female inven­tors worth not­ing; how­ev­er, some have been erased from the mar­gins. His­to­ry tends to for­get about women. Addi­tion­al­ly, the vic­tors who write our his­to­ries are some­times those who push the less­er-known names aside and focus on the famil­iar. And though the patent can be proof that an idea exist­ed, it is also proof that a black woman fought to make it leg­i­ble to a bureau­cra­cy that favors white men.

The space between inven­tion and reward was crowd­ed with bar­ri­ers: racism, sex­ism, lack of cap­i­tal, lack of man­u­fac­tur­ing access, insti­tu­tion­al dis­re­gard, cor­po­rate own­er­ship struc­tures, and the slow cul­tur­al habit of for­get­ting the peo­ple who made ordi­nary life easier.

Still, the inven­tions remained.

A wringer that spared hands. Dough that mixed more even­ly. A bed that fold­ed away. A board shaped to sleeves. A fur­nace imag­ined in zones. A salon machine built to save time. A san­i­tary belt designed for com­fort. A feed­ing device that returned dig­ni­ty. A secu­ri­ty sys­tem that changed the door. An illu­sion that trav­eled. A med­ical device that pro­tects sight.

And maybe that was the final point: even when cred­it was delayed, and mon­ey trav­eled else­where, the world itself shift­ed. The tech­nol­o­gy car­ried the fin­ger­prints of these bril­liant women for­ward, into hous­es and hos­pi­tals, into rou­tines so nor­mal we bare­ly noticed the great inventors.

As a result, the paper trail did not sim­ply record inven­tion; it also record­ed the price of being remem­bered and forgotten.

---

Sources

• “Who Invents and Who Gets the Cred­it?” Inven­tion & Tech­nol­o­gy (dis­cus­sion of Ellen Eglin, $18 sale, and the quote attrib­uted to Char­lotte Smith’s The Woman Inven­tor).
• U.S. Patent 305,474: Judy W. Reed, “Dough knead­er and roller” (Sept. 9, 1884).
• Judy W. Reed biog­ra­phy (lim­it­ed bio­graph­i­cal record beyond the patent).
• U.S. Patent 322,177: Sarah E. Goode, “Cab­i­net-bed” (July 14, 1885).
• Nation­al Archives/DocsTeach: “Sarah E. Goode’s Fold­ing Beds” (patent file con­tents: draw­ings, amend­ments, cor­re­spon­dence; Record Group 241).
• U.S. Patent 473,653: Sarah Boone, “Iron­ing-board” (Apr. 26, 1892).
• Con­necti­cut His­to­ry: Sarah Boone overview; notes uncer­tain­ty about finan­cial benefit.
• U.S. Patent 1,325,905: Alice H. Park­er, “Heat­ing-fur­nace” (Dec. 23, 1919) (patent PDF).
• Lemel­son-MIT: Alice H. Park­er pro­file (zone-heat­ing pre­cur­sor framing).
• U.S. Patent 1,693,515: Mar­jorie S. Joyn­er, “Per­ma­nent wav­ing machine,” show­ing assign­ment to Madam C. J. Walk­er Man­u­fac­tur­ing Co.
• Nation­al Archives Muse­um: “Nation­al Inventor’s Day: Mar­jorie S. Joyn­er” (peti­tion con­text and career notes).
• U.S. Patent 2,745,406: Beat­rice Ken­ner, “San­i­tary belt” (May 15, 1956).
• Lemel­son-MIT: Mary Beat­rice David­son Ken­ner pro­file (mar­ket­ing inter­est with­drawn after racism; mul­ti­ple patents).
• U.S. Patent 2,550,554: Bessie Vir­ginia Grif­fin, “Portable recep­ta­cle sup­port” (Apr. 24, 1951).
• Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine: Bessie Blount/Griffin overview (Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion dis­in­ter­est con­text and patent reference).
• U.S. Patent 3,482,037: Marie Van Brit­tan Brown and Albert L. Brown, “Home secu­ri­ty sys­tem uti­liz­ing tele­vi­sion sur­veil­lance” (Dec. 2, 1969).
• WIRED (con­text on Brown’s lega­cy and how home sur­veil­lance evolved beyond orig­i­nal intent).
• U.S. Patent 4,229,761: Valerie Thomas, “Illu­sion trans­mit­ter” (Oct. 21, 1980).
• Lemel­son-MIT: Valerie Thomas pro­file (NASA career con­text and inven­tion summary).
• USPTO: “Sights on the prize” (Patri­cia Bath; Patent 4,744,360 and his­tor­i­cal framing).
• U.S. Patent 4,744,360: “Appa­ra­tus for ablat­ing and remov­ing cataract lens­es” (Patri­cia Bath; May 17, 1988).