Description
Women were the co-inventors and per- fecters of everything from penicillin to the atomic bomb, refrigeration to computer software. But how many of their names and achievements are remembered by history?Eli Whitney's famed cotton gin turns out to have been designed in part and fi- nanced in its entirety by Georgia planta- tion owner Catherine Littlefield Greene. Smallpox vaccination, credited to British physician Edward Jenner, was actually introduced to Europe almost a century earlier by outspoken feminist and literary figure Lady Mary Montagu.History is full of women inventors who have been overlooked or cheated out of their due. Ranging from the momentous to the mundane, the discoveries and inventions of women have affected all our lives for better and for worse-in hundreds of ways. How different would the world be without the chocolate-chip cookie? The disposable diaper? Jet-aircraft navigation? The cure for sleeping sickness?This book presents the stories of these women and their inventions, and the one thing they all had in common: They did not let the odds stop them from tinkering with the way things were and coming up with something better.ISBN:0688064647
