12 Essential Modern Inventions By Women Who You've Probably Never Heard Of

Propelling rockets into space is a big physics problem — but the modern solution, the hydrazine resistojet, was created by NASA scientist Yvonne Brill in 1967. It’s an engine that drastically reduces the amount of propellant required, is far more reliable and efficient than the old system, and makes it viable for us to go greater distances in space for the first time.

Kevlar, the material used to make bullet-proof vests, is one of the strongest materials in the world, but it was created almost by accident by DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek in 1966. DuPont was looking for a material for stronger tires, and Kwolek and her team kept producing a cloudy, strange chemical solution that they were throwing away. But Kwolek convinced her teammates to “weave” it into a fibre — and the material of Batman’s dreams was born.

Wealthy American socialite Josephine Cochrane invented the first working dishwasher way back in 1886, for the sake of her servants. The invention, which looked very similar to modern editions with its wire frames for dishes and hot water injections, won the prize for “Best Mechanical Construction” at the 1893 World’s Fair, became widely used, and no doubt made her servants happier.

When you’re first born, you’ll go through a series of tests to determine your health and reactions — and the Apgar score, as it’s known, is named after its inventor, obstetrician Dr. Virginia Apgar, who started testing newborns in 1952. Even though it’s named after her, it’s since become an acronym for its key parts: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration. Call that a lucky coincidence.

Grace Hopper, along with Howard Aiken, created Harvard’s famous Mark I computer in 1944: a room-sized beast that translated written language into computer code. It was the start of the computing revolution (and Hopper also invented the word “de-bugging” when she had to get moths out of its huge circuit boards).

Where do you even start with Gertrude Bell Elion? She won the Nobel Prize for her contribution to medicine, which included patenting an array of 45 different drugs. In their number are 6-mercaptopurine (Purinethol) and 6-thioguanine, which are used to fight leukaemia, the first immuno-suppressant, and medicines for malaria, cancer and meningitis. After she retired, she supervised the production of the first AIDS treatment drug, azidothymidine.

Ida Hyde broke a lot of barriers — she was the first woman to do research at Harvard Medical School, for one — but one of her most enduring legacies is the microelectrode, a device she invented in the 1930s that stimulates and monitors the activities inside a cell. Researchers now use them widely, including in neuroscience and cardiology.

Image: Cole Palmer Pharmaceuticals.

In the 1940s, two workers at the New York Department of Health, Rachel Fuller Brown and Elizabeth Lee Hazen, collaborated via post on a series of tests, trying to eliminate the fungi from soil samples. Despite their no doubt long-suffering mailmen, they cracked it, and the result, the drug Nyastin, is used to combat fungal infections in humans and plants.

Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian actress, is most famous for her films and cheekbones, but she also co-invented a system of wireless communication called “spread spectrum” to fight the Nazis during World War II. The radio technology was vital at the time, but it was also the foundation for modern WiFi and mobile phones.

Dr. Erna Schneider Hoover, an American mathematician, worked for the telephone company Bell for over 30 years, and used her knowledge of logic and data processing to invent the modern call center system in 1967. It meant that thousands of calls could be connected at one time, without overwhelming the operators or the circuits. It was, needless to say, incredibly successful.

The very first coffee filters didn’t come from Italy — they came from the mind of German inventor Melitta Benz in 1908. She experimented with her son’s blotting paper and a brass pot with holes punched in it, and the result was so successful that today, Melitta Ltd, her family company, is one of the world’s biggest filter companies.