Women patented inventions when they didn’t even vote yet – 01/20/2024 – Science

At the beginning of the 20th century, when women still did not have the right to vote, eighteen of them, including Brazilians and foreigners, entered the patent process in Brazil for their inventions, which covered different technological fields possible at the time and also aimed to facilitate tasks everyday.

These documents were revealed by Inpi (National Institute of Industrial Property) in December last year, when the federal government body made public around 3,200 historical patents, dating from 1895 to 1929, the contents of which were discovered in 2020 and digitized from of the following year. A Sheet showed some of them in the series Invenções do Brasil.

Among the creations recorded by these women are creams to cure skin diseases, machines for making cigars, refrigerated cabinets, processes for manufacturing textiles, bleach and disinfectant preparations, lighters, among others.

The discovery was a surprise for employee and researcher Flávia Romano Villa Verde, head of the Patent Documentation Division at Inpi.

“When reading the patents and researching, we realized that there were women with innovative ideas and varied inventions. Some of them were Brazilian, like an inventor who created a box to separate fat.”

But little is known about the lives, academic training and professional experiences of these women, with the exception of those who belonged to the elite and had access to education.

Among the records, there is a teacher and a doctor, while the others are classified as industrialists. The nationalities are very varied: Brazil, United States, France, Belgium and Germany, among others.

One of them was the Portuguese Hilda de Almeida Brandão Rodrigues Miranda, owner of Fábrica de Tapetes Beiriz, in Portugal, opened in 1919. She created a style of knotting for carpets found in the noble halls of the Municipal Chambers of Porto and Lisbon and in the International Court from The Hague.

His patent approved in Brazil is a “manual process for manufacturing carpets, runners, curtains and cushions”, in 1922, signed by President Epitácio Pessoa.

In the so-called “age of inventors”, it was not common for women to play a leading role in the technological advances that arrived in the country. But one of them contradicted the idea. The English socialite and princess Anne of Löwenstein-Wertheim was not only a scientist, but also an aviation enthusiast, who was still taking her first steps.

She created an anti-sickness bed for boats, when trips across the ocean were exclusively made by ship, according to Flávia Romano. Its patent in Brazil was granted by the then President of the Republic Nilo Peçanha, in 1910.

Anne’s pioneering spirit, however, led her to a tragedy. She was the first woman to attempt a transatlantic flight. But the trip was unsuccessful and she disappeared into the ocean.

These projects would probably only arise in the female mind, according to Priscila Kashiwabara, intellectual property specialist and partner at Kasznar Leonardos.

“Women’s inventions at that time were linked to domestic and health problems, reflecting their concerns and needs. Today, we still see this lack of representation, and it is important to include more women in the innovative environment.”

For Priscila, it is interesting to note how women, even in the past, had the potential to innovate and bring improvements to society.