March 8, 2021 • 16 mins
For this International Women's Day episode, Will and Mango handed the mic to their good pal Jo Piazza. Here are the lady geniuses you should be thanking for your trash can foot pedal, your quieter airplane, and so much more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of I Heart Radio.
Guess what Will, Oh Will? It's not here, neither is Mango.
It's just me, Isn't it kind of fun hearing a
lady voice on this show? Well? Did you know that
(00:24):
the foot pedal trash can was invented by Lilian Gilbreth,
the mom from Cheaper by the Dozen? Sure was in
the early nine dreds. Lilian came up with several ingenious
little inventions to improve things that already existed. So, yeah,
the trash can already existed, but could you open it
with your foot? No? No, you couldn't, not tell Lilian
(00:45):
came along and fixed it. She also added shelves to
refrigerator doors. Where'd you put the condiments? Until then? Where
did you put the catch up? Until Lilian came along
along with her husband. She devoted her entire life to
try to figure out the one best to do any task,
how to make anything a little easier. That's just the
story of being a woman, right, We just want our
(01:06):
lives to be a little bit easier. She dubbed this
new field time and Motion studies, and in fact, she
was the first woman admitted to the National Academy of Engineering,
where she would later do all sorts of other important things,
like help Hoover create jobs during the Great Depression and
also figure out how to quickly convert places into factories
during World War Two. She did all of this, all
(01:30):
of this important work while raising twelve children, twelve of them.
She is like the patron saint of efficient mothers, and
I personally would like to thank her every time that
I don't have to use my hands to open a
trash can. Thank you, Lillian. That is just the first
of the nine facts that I have for you today
(01:50):
about surprising things invented by women. Let's dig in. I
am your host for today, Joe Piazza filling in for
Will and Mango on Part Time Genius. They promised they're
going to come back and do more episodes soon, but
maybe they won't. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm here forever.
They passed me the bank today on International Women's Day,
(02:10):
and frankly, I was happy to grab it from them
because this is something that I have been dying to
talk about for a while now. Because when we think
of inventors, and I want you to think about it
for a minute, I want you to close your eyes,
and I want you to say the word inventor. You
can say it out loud, or you can say it
in your head. And then I want you to think
about who pops into your head. Who's picture Thomas Addison,
(02:34):
Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Old men, A whole lot
of old men. You can Google inventors too, and I
actually I just did Google inventors here and all that
pops up on the first image search is a bunch
of old men. I should not find this surprising because
women have been written out of a lot of history
(02:56):
since the beginning of history. But now, right now, today,
in this episode, it is time to give lady inventors
their due. Let's get started. Number two the dishwasher. This
is actually a kind of weird story because the dishwasher
was invented by a socialite, a fancy rich lady named
(03:19):
Josephine Cochrane. Josephine's dad was a civil engineer and her
grandfather was an inventor. Old men again, and he made
several important contributions to the steamboat so engineering things and
make and stuff. It was just in her blood. But
she had lived most of her life as a socialite,
fancy rich girl. She was charged with entertaining the guests
(03:41):
that her husband brought home. One day, she realized that
her servants were chipping her china while they were handwashing
the plates. She was very irritated by this, very irritated
that her china was getting chipped, so she started doing
the china herself. Washing the dishes the crazy thing for
lady to do back then, and she realized just how
(04:03):
tedious a task that it was took it as a challenge.
She went to her shed out back, because you know,
all rich ladies have a shed, built a box, constructed
wires to hold the dishes, and realized that a simple
jet of soapy, warm water heated by a copper boiler
would do the task for her. Initially the machine was
(04:25):
hand cranked, but then she added a motor to outsource
that work. I love a good outsource in she presented
her Cochran dishwasher at Chicago's World Fair, where it won
an award for its design and durability. Later, she made
a heap of money when her company sold to Kitchen Aid.
Also fun fact, her face was then also put on
(04:47):
a Romanian stamp. We don't know why that is, but
good lesson for all of us. When the people who
work for you aren't doing a good enough job, invent
something to replace them. Make a ton of money, get
your face on a foreign stamp. None of us like
to wash dishes. I actually don't wash the dishes in
my house. My husband washes the dishes and he loads
(05:07):
the dishwasher because I apparently always do it wrong. So
one woman actually tried to invent a giant dishwasher that
would clean the entire room. Oregon inventor Francis Gabe. As
a kid, she had always dreamed of growing up having
kids in a home. But then one day one of
her kids left this big trail of gross fig jam
on the floor, and she was like, you know what,
(05:28):
I don't want to clean it. I don't want to
clean it. How many parents out there have been like,
I don't want to clean that up. What if we
just leave it here forever? So she got to work
and she invented a self cleaning kitchen using sprinklers, jets,
and apparently sixty eight different patented devices. She basically put
her kitchen through a car wash and then dried the
place by blowing soapy water down a spout that get
(05:52):
this funneled into her doghouse to then I can't so
I can't stop laughing. I just I can't say this
without laughing to give her Great Dan a shower. Now,
places like Nickelodeon Magazine and The Daily Mail they declared
her a genius because she was it's a freaking genius.
Her neighbors were way less kind, way less happy with
(06:13):
what she was doing and referred to her as quote
that crazy bat. Next up, number four. This one is
something that I've actually that I always wondered about because
I am a big fan of a Murphy bed. I
fantasized about a Murphy bed when I was little. I
think I saw on a sitcom once and I was like,
oh my gosh, I want a bed that comes down
from the wall. It's like magic. And so I've always
(06:35):
kind of wondered who invented the Murphy bed. This week
I found out and Sarah E. Good was born in Toledo,
but she ended up a slave because of the Fugitive
Slave Act. After the Civil War, she fled Chicago, where
she and her husband started a furniture shop. That is
when Sarah realized that people in small apartments didn't have
space to fit both a desk and a bed. In Chicago,
(06:58):
those apartments were like huge out to New York apartments. So,
being a real smart lady, she figured out a way
to combine the two this kind of convertible roll top dusk.
The desk had all of the typical desk things, It
had space to write, it had drawers for stationary but
when you pulled the lever it flipped into a single bed.
Sarah ended up with one of the very first patents
(07:20):
ever given to an African American woman. Fifteen years later,
the Morphy Bed built on this idea. Now, how many
of you are out there are poor over coffee people.
My husband is a very big poor over coffee person.
I am a Mr. Coffee person because I like to
wake up and hit a button and get coffee. But
he likes to do all of this work before his
caffeine goes into his body, which seems crazy to me.
(07:43):
But anyone who does make poor over coffee knows Melita Filters.
And I always assumed that Melita was just like some
fancy Italian coffee maker. Turns out she was actually a
German housewife. And although people had been drinking coffee for
hundreds of years, the beverage was pretty unpleasant and bitter
and gross until the early twentieth century. At the time,
(08:06):
there was no solid way to filter grounds, no easy,
efficient way. Residue lingered in cups, and it made it
all bitter and gritty. Melita decided she no longer wanted
her coffee to be gross. Didn't want chunks floating in
her coffee, so she ripped a piece of water paper
from her son, Willie's schoolbook, laid it over the bottom
of a perforated tin cup, let the liquid pass through
(08:30):
Wila coffee with no chunks. The result was a deliciously
smooth cup of coffee with all the flavor none of
the bits. She quickly patented her filter top device lined
with filter paper, and began her transformation from mom to mogul.
Within three years, her son and her husband were working
(08:51):
for and her company was selling paper filters in a
hundred and fifty countries. This is also the mark of
a good woman. Boss instituted a rare five day work
week for her employees, this was not common at the time.
This was not usual. She increased their vacation time and
created a company fund to help with her employees housing
and health issues. Oh my god, it was like a
(09:11):
safety net. Imagine that crazy. Over time, her firm also
made other advances in the coffee world, including conical filters
and vacuum packing. She really did make coffee the best
part of waking up. Speaking of coffee, and I'm always
speaming out coffee. I need some right now, and we're
going to pause for an ad. I'm gonna get me
(09:32):
a cup, gonna filter it, just like a German housewife
seeing a sec. Okay, hello, we're back. Still not well
(09:53):
and mango. Nope, Joe still right here. So speaking of
mom inventors, and I like to talk about mom inventors
a lot, let's talk about bet Ness Smith. Graham is
a woman who never wanted to be a secretary, but
in ninety one she joined a typing pool after a
recent divorce. She needed to support herself and her son.
(10:13):
The problem was now she was a really really crap typist,
like bad, but she couldn't get fired because she needed
money to support herself and her son. So she came
up with a hack for that. She filled a nail
polished bottle with some white tempera paint and took it
to work. Then she used the little nail polish brush
cover all of her mistakes, went back typed again. Before long,
(10:35):
everyone on her team was like, I need that bottle
of white out. But it wasn't called white out at first.
At first Graham was calling it mistake out, which I
think is actually better than white out, And she thought
she might have a business there, but she was reluctant
to leave that job. She was doing this as a
side hustle. Her boss found out fired her for doing
her mistake out business on company time, But that turned
(10:57):
out to be the push that she needed, because within
six years is mistake Out, then called liquid Paper, was
a million dollar business in Gillette bought the company for
forty seven point five million dollars. And that son of hers,
the one that she was working so hard to raise
all on her own, he did okay for himself too.
(11:18):
He is Michael Nesmith, the tall guy in a hat
from the Monkeys. Yes, the creator of white Out spawned
a monkey. You're welcome for that. People. Now, if you're
not a fan of the Monkeys, you will definitely be
a fan of this life saving device. Yep, the inventor
of one of the very first usable life rafts, the
(11:39):
kind of life raft that actually saved a lot of
lives was a woman named Maria Beasley. Now, of course
the life raft existed, there's been like life canoes since
the beginning of boats. But Maria Beasley made a much
improved life raft. This life raft had guardrails, was fireproof,
it was foldable for easy storage, which meant you could
(11:59):
put a lot of them on the boat. And her
life rafts were actually used on the Titanic and saved
over seven hundred lives. That was not everybody on the Titanic,
as we all know. My heart will go on, but
it was a lot of people, just not Leo. Now
I have a very important question for you. What would
(12:19):
we do without fire escapes? Well, my friends, we would
get trapped in burning buildings. In the late nineteenth century
early twentieth century, this was a huge problem in New
York City. But that problem was fixed when a woman
named Anna Connelly came up with an idea. She's from Philadelphia,
of course, Hello Philly, we are the best city in America.
(12:40):
We make good people here in Philadelphia. I'm saying this
all to you from my closet in Philadelphia. Anyway, Anna Connolly, Philadelphian,
proposed and patented the idea of for fire escapes in
seven just little metal bridges placed on the outside of
a building. So this wasn't great is because it was cheap.
(13:01):
It was too cheap for landlords to say, oh no,
I don't want to do that. But they were also outside,
so cities could tell who was compliant and who wasn't,
and they could say, build a fire escape because we
don't want anyone to die in your burning building. This
ingenious invention by a Philadelphian not only saved thousands of lives,
but it also allowed firefighters to climb up a building
(13:24):
and save people who were trapped in it, particularly children.
We have Anna Connolly to think for all of that.
And finally, last but not least, by the way, how
could I get Google to put some of these women
up when we search for inventor? Who can I call
at Google to make that happen. I want to tell
you about a woman whose name is so good that
(13:45):
I want to make a movie about her, just so
I can call it El Dorado Jones. That's her name,
El Dorado Jones, El Dorado was born in eighteen sixty
in Missouri, and she needed a job, so she took
the only job that a woman could get in Missouri.
She was a school teacher and then a stenographer, because
those were the kinds of jobs they gave women. But
(14:05):
at heart, she was an inventor, and over time she
invented a ton of things that you used today. The
lightweight travel iron, a travel sized ironing board, a collapsible
hat rack. Actually I don't know if we still use
a collapsible hat rack, but we would if we still
wore a lot of hats. She also apparently made some
sort of anti damp salt shaker, which sounds great because
(14:26):
who wants damp salt? Damp salon is gross. They actually
nicknamed her the Iron Woman, which is also a great
name for a book. Let's actually put the names together,
El Dorado Jones, the Iron Woman. It's like a superhero.
She was also a chain smoking badass who started a
factory in Illinois that mostly employed women, and not just women,
(14:49):
but women of middle age forty year old women working
in this factory. And in that factory, she designed the
very first successful airplane muffler, which she patented a few
years later and it muffled the sound of airplanes without
using an energy. Now, I'm not going to read you
her entire New York Times obituary, but I am going
to read the last line because it's also really good
(15:12):
and it's clearly the first line of El Dorado Jones
Iron Woman, the movie. This quote that El Dorado Jones
used to say, do not forget to exploit men all
you can, because if you don't, they will exploit you. Now,
that is a nice way to end International Women's Day.
(15:33):
That is it for today's part time genius. I am
Joe Piazza. Thank you so much for listening, and if
you haven't checked out my other podcasts, which by the way,
are some of Mango's favorites. And he'd say that too
if I let him back in the studio, but but
I'm keeping him out and taking the show forever. He
told me to tell you that. Be sure to check
out the Committed podcast, which is going into its sixth season,
(15:53):
so there's plenty of to binge and under the influence,
a deep dive into the world of mom influencers, men
of whom are inventors themselves, and you'll love it. Promise
Happy International Women's Day. Hi guys. M part Time Genius
(16:22):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of I Heart Radio.
Guess what Will, Oh Will? It's not here, neither is Mango.
It's just me, Isn't it kind of fun hearing a
lady voice on this show? Well? Did you know that
(00:24):
the foot pedal trash can was invented by Lilian Gilbreth,
the mom from Cheaper by the Dozen? Sure was in
the early nine dreds. Lilian came up with several ingenious
little inventions to improve things that already existed. So, yeah,
the trash can already existed, but could you open it
with your foot? No? No, you couldn't, not tell Lilian
(00:45):
came along and fixed it. She also added shelves to
refrigerator doors. Where'd you put the condiments? Until then? Where
did you put the catch up? Until Lilian came along
along with her husband. She devoted her entire life to
try to figure out the one best to do any task,
how to make anything a little easier. That's just the
story of being a woman, right, We just want our
(01:06):
lives to be a little bit easier. She dubbed this
new field time and Motion studies, and in fact, she
was the first woman admitted to the National Academy of Engineering,
where she would later do all sorts of other important things,
like help Hoover create jobs during the Great Depression and
also figure out how to quickly convert places into factories
during World War Two. She did all of this, all
(01:30):
of this important work while raising twelve children, twelve of them.
She is like the patron saint of efficient mothers, and
I personally would like to thank her every time that
I don't have to use my hands to open a
trash can. Thank you, Lillian. That is just the first
of the nine facts that I have for you today
(01:50):
about surprising things invented by women. Let's dig in. I
am your host for today, Joe Piazza filling in for
Will and Mango on Part Time Genius. They promised they're
going to come back and do more episodes soon, but
maybe they won't. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm here forever.
They passed me the bank today on International Women's Day,
(02:10):
and frankly, I was happy to grab it from them
because this is something that I have been dying to
talk about for a while now. Because when we think
of inventors, and I want you to think about it
for a minute, I want you to close your eyes,
and I want you to say the word inventor. You
can say it out loud, or you can say it
in your head. And then I want you to think
about who pops into your head. Who's picture Thomas Addison,
(02:34):
Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Old men, A whole lot
of old men. You can Google inventors too, and I
actually I just did Google inventors here and all that
pops up on the first image search is a bunch
of old men. I should not find this surprising because
women have been written out of a lot of history
(02:56):
since the beginning of history. But now, right now, today,
in this episode, it is time to give lady inventors
their due. Let's get started. Number two the dishwasher. This
is actually a kind of weird story because the dishwasher
was invented by a socialite, a fancy rich lady named
(03:19):
Josephine Cochrane. Josephine's dad was a civil engineer and her
grandfather was an inventor. Old men again, and he made
several important contributions to the steamboat so engineering things and
make and stuff. It was just in her blood. But
she had lived most of her life as a socialite,
fancy rich girl. She was charged with entertaining the guests
(03:41):
that her husband brought home. One day, she realized that
her servants were chipping her china while they were handwashing
the plates. She was very irritated by this, very irritated
that her china was getting chipped, so she started doing
the china herself. Washing the dishes the crazy thing for
lady to do back then, and she realized just how
(04:03):
tedious a task that it was took it as a challenge.
She went to her shed out back, because you know,
all rich ladies have a shed, built a box, constructed
wires to hold the dishes, and realized that a simple
jet of soapy, warm water heated by a copper boiler
would do the task for her. Initially the machine was
(04:25):
hand cranked, but then she added a motor to outsource
that work. I love a good outsource in she presented
her Cochran dishwasher at Chicago's World Fair, where it won
an award for its design and durability. Later, she made
a heap of money when her company sold to Kitchen Aid.
Also fun fact, her face was then also put on
(04:47):
a Romanian stamp. We don't know why that is, but
good lesson for all of us. When the people who
work for you aren't doing a good enough job, invent
something to replace them. Make a ton of money, get
your face on a foreign stamp. None of us like
to wash dishes. I actually don't wash the dishes in
my house. My husband washes the dishes and he loads
(05:07):
the dishwasher because I apparently always do it wrong. So
one woman actually tried to invent a giant dishwasher that
would clean the entire room. Oregon inventor Francis Gabe. As
a kid, she had always dreamed of growing up having
kids in a home. But then one day one of
her kids left this big trail of gross fig jam
on the floor, and she was like, you know what,
(05:28):
I don't want to clean it. I don't want to
clean it. How many parents out there have been like,
I don't want to clean that up. What if we
just leave it here forever? So she got to work
and she invented a self cleaning kitchen using sprinklers, jets,
and apparently sixty eight different patented devices. She basically put
her kitchen through a car wash and then dried the
place by blowing soapy water down a spout that get
(05:52):
this funneled into her doghouse to then I can't so
I can't stop laughing. I just I can't say this
without laughing to give her Great Dan a shower. Now,
places like Nickelodeon Magazine and The Daily Mail they declared
her a genius because she was it's a freaking genius.
Her neighbors were way less kind, way less happy with
(06:13):
what she was doing and referred to her as quote
that crazy bat. Next up, number four. This one is
something that I've actually that I always wondered about because
I am a big fan of a Murphy bed. I
fantasized about a Murphy bed when I was little. I
think I saw on a sitcom once and I was like,
oh my gosh, I want a bed that comes down
from the wall. It's like magic. And so I've always
(06:35):
kind of wondered who invented the Murphy bed. This week
I found out and Sarah E. Good was born in Toledo,
but she ended up a slave because of the Fugitive
Slave Act. After the Civil War, she fled Chicago, where
she and her husband started a furniture shop. That is
when Sarah realized that people in small apartments didn't have
space to fit both a desk and a bed. In Chicago,
(06:58):
those apartments were like huge out to New York apartments. So,
being a real smart lady, she figured out a way
to combine the two this kind of convertible roll top dusk.
The desk had all of the typical desk things, It
had space to write, it had drawers for stationary but
when you pulled the lever it flipped into a single bed.
Sarah ended up with one of the very first patents
(07:20):
ever given to an African American woman. Fifteen years later,
the Morphy Bed built on this idea. Now, how many
of you are out there are poor over coffee people.
My husband is a very big poor over coffee person.
I am a Mr. Coffee person because I like to
wake up and hit a button and get coffee. But
he likes to do all of this work before his
caffeine goes into his body, which seems crazy to me.
(07:43):
But anyone who does make poor over coffee knows Melita Filters.
And I always assumed that Melita was just like some
fancy Italian coffee maker. Turns out she was actually a
German housewife. And although people had been drinking coffee for
hundreds of years, the beverage was pretty unpleasant and bitter
and gross until the early twentieth century. At the time,
(08:06):
there was no solid way to filter grounds, no easy,
efficient way. Residue lingered in cups, and it made it
all bitter and gritty. Melita decided she no longer wanted
her coffee to be gross. Didn't want chunks floating in
her coffee, so she ripped a piece of water paper
from her son, Willie's schoolbook, laid it over the bottom
of a perforated tin cup, let the liquid pass through
(08:30):
Wila coffee with no chunks. The result was a deliciously
smooth cup of coffee with all the flavor none of
the bits. She quickly patented her filter top device lined
with filter paper, and began her transformation from mom to mogul.
Within three years, her son and her husband were working
(08:51):
for and her company was selling paper filters in a
hundred and fifty countries. This is also the mark of
a good woman. Boss instituted a rare five day work
week for her employees, this was not common at the time.
This was not usual. She increased their vacation time and
created a company fund to help with her employees housing
and health issues. Oh my god, it was like a
(09:11):
safety net. Imagine that crazy. Over time, her firm also
made other advances in the coffee world, including conical filters
and vacuum packing. She really did make coffee the best
part of waking up. Speaking of coffee, and I'm always
speaming out coffee. I need some right now, and we're
going to pause for an ad. I'm gonna get me
(09:32):
a cup, gonna filter it, just like a German housewife
seeing a sec. Okay, hello, we're back. Still not well
(09:53):
and mango. Nope, Joe still right here. So speaking of
mom inventors, and I like to talk about mom inventors
a lot, let's talk about bet Ness Smith. Graham is
a woman who never wanted to be a secretary, but
in ninety one she joined a typing pool after a
recent divorce. She needed to support herself and her son.
(10:13):
The problem was now she was a really really crap typist,
like bad, but she couldn't get fired because she needed
money to support herself and her son. So she came
up with a hack for that. She filled a nail
polished bottle with some white tempera paint and took it
to work. Then she used the little nail polish brush
cover all of her mistakes, went back typed again. Before long,
(10:35):
everyone on her team was like, I need that bottle
of white out. But it wasn't called white out at first.
At first Graham was calling it mistake out, which I
think is actually better than white out, And she thought
she might have a business there, but she was reluctant
to leave that job. She was doing this as a
side hustle. Her boss found out fired her for doing
her mistake out business on company time, But that turned
(10:57):
out to be the push that she needed, because within
six years is mistake Out, then called liquid Paper, was
a million dollar business in Gillette bought the company for
forty seven point five million dollars. And that son of hers,
the one that she was working so hard to raise
all on her own, he did okay for himself too.
(11:18):
He is Michael Nesmith, the tall guy in a hat
from the Monkeys. Yes, the creator of white Out spawned
a monkey. You're welcome for that. People. Now, if you're
not a fan of the Monkeys, you will definitely be
a fan of this life saving device. Yep, the inventor
of one of the very first usable life rafts, the
(11:39):
kind of life raft that actually saved a lot of
lives was a woman named Maria Beasley. Now, of course
the life raft existed, there's been like life canoes since
the beginning of boats. But Maria Beasley made a much
improved life raft. This life raft had guardrails, was fireproof,
it was foldable for easy storage, which meant you could
(11:59):
put a lot of them on the boat. And her
life rafts were actually used on the Titanic and saved
over seven hundred lives. That was not everybody on the Titanic,
as we all know. My heart will go on, but
it was a lot of people, just not Leo. Now
I have a very important question for you. What would
(12:19):
we do without fire escapes? Well, my friends, we would
get trapped in burning buildings. In the late nineteenth century
early twentieth century, this was a huge problem in New
York City. But that problem was fixed when a woman
named Anna Connelly came up with an idea. She's from Philadelphia,
of course, Hello Philly, we are the best city in America.
(12:40):
We make good people here in Philadelphia. I'm saying this
all to you from my closet in Philadelphia. Anyway, Anna Connolly, Philadelphian,
proposed and patented the idea of for fire escapes in
seven just little metal bridges placed on the outside of
a building. So this wasn't great is because it was cheap.
(13:01):
It was too cheap for landlords to say, oh no,
I don't want to do that. But they were also outside,
so cities could tell who was compliant and who wasn't,
and they could say, build a fire escape because we
don't want anyone to die in your burning building. This
ingenious invention by a Philadelphian not only saved thousands of lives,
but it also allowed firefighters to climb up a building
(13:24):
and save people who were trapped in it, particularly children.
We have Anna Connolly to think for all of that.
And finally, last but not least, by the way, how
could I get Google to put some of these women
up when we search for inventor? Who can I call
at Google to make that happen. I want to tell
you about a woman whose name is so good that
(13:45):
I want to make a movie about her, just so
I can call it El Dorado Jones. That's her name,
El Dorado Jones, El Dorado was born in eighteen sixty
in Missouri, and she needed a job, so she took
the only job that a woman could get in Missouri.
She was a school teacher and then a stenographer, because
those were the kinds of jobs they gave women. But
(14:05):
at heart, she was an inventor, and over time she
invented a ton of things that you used today. The
lightweight travel iron, a travel sized ironing board, a collapsible
hat rack. Actually I don't know if we still use
a collapsible hat rack, but we would if we still
wore a lot of hats. She also apparently made some
sort of anti damp salt shaker, which sounds great because
(14:26):
who wants damp salt? Damp salon is gross. They actually
nicknamed her the Iron Woman, which is also a great
name for a book. Let's actually put the names together,
El Dorado Jones, the Iron Woman. It's like a superhero.
She was also a chain smoking badass who started a
factory in Illinois that mostly employed women, and not just women,
(14:49):
but women of middle age forty year old women working
in this factory. And in that factory, she designed the
very first successful airplane muffler, which she patented a few
years later and it muffled the sound of airplanes without
using an energy. Now, I'm not going to read you
her entire New York Times obituary, but I am going
to read the last line because it's also really good
(15:12):
and it's clearly the first line of El Dorado Jones
Iron Woman, the movie. This quote that El Dorado Jones
used to say, do not forget to exploit men all
you can, because if you don't, they will exploit you. Now,
that is a nice way to end International Women's Day.
(15:33):
That is it for today's part time genius. I am
Joe Piazza. Thank you so much for listening, and if
you haven't checked out my other podcasts, which by the way,
are some of Mango's favorites. And he'd say that too
if I let him back in the studio, but but
I'm keeping him out and taking the show forever. He
told me to tell you that. Be sure to check
out the Committed podcast, which is going into its sixth season,
(15:53):
so there's plenty of to binge and under the influence,
a deep dive into the world of mom influencers, men
of whom are inventors themselves, and you'll love it. Promise
Happy International Women's Day. Hi guys. M part Time Genius
(16:22):
is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Part-Time Genius News
Host
Will and Mango
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