Women Inventors

Southland Times, Issue 22499, 8 December 1934, Page 21

Women Inventors

In the search for fame and fortune via the Patents Office women seem to be outstripping the men. An outstanding feature of the Exhibition of Inventions at Central Hall, Westminster, is the fact that nearly all the women s inventions work, says the NewsChronicle. . The conversational gambit, If only I could have made it properly, I am sure it would work. But you see the idea . .” is heard far more often at the stands where men, of an inventive turn of mind, tug and twist at their pathetic contraptions of wood and wire, than at those where women are catching the eyes of manufacturers with their gadgets. From the number of domestic appliances, on view, it would seem that the place of women inventors is still the home. But if the home is not equipped with a mechanic’s work-bench the aid of the engineer is called in. An actress has produced a deck-chair with canvas that disappears like a roller-blind when you dash indoors out of the rain. A housewife, impatient with man-made bread tins, shows just how easy it should be to put the bread away. Other women inventors have produced such devices as a softener and spreader for cold butter; a pocket ash-tray, an easily adjustable slumber cap, leg rests, coat-hangers and all sorts of kitchen fittings. There is even an electric iron that pleats material. They all seem to be so adequately presented. Of course, lots of the ideas invented by men work. But lots don’t. One that does is a “colour piano” that produces on a screen colour symphonies as you play the tune. There is a bathing-tent affair to be worn round the neck while dressing or undressing, which, with a little manipulation, becomes in turn a tea table and a goalmouth for beach football.