August 26, 2026 • 39 mins
Beulah was such a prolific inventor in the early 20th century that the press nicknamed her Lady Edison. She was an outlier as an unmarried woman who got her foot in the door as an inventor by pounding the pavement in 1920s New York.
Research:
- Bengtson, Harlan H. “Beulah Louise Henry.” EBSCO. 2021. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/beulah-louise-henry
- “Beulah Louise Henry.” National Inventors Hall of Fame. https://www.invent.org/inductees/beulah-louise-henry
- Dick, Gerry. “Beulah henry Sits in Chiffon Laboratory Inventing Almost Everything But Excuses.” The Rockford Argus. April 8. 1937. https://www.newspapers.com/image/531344097/?match=1&terms=%22Beulah%20Henry%22&search-id=22e1b59c-1edb-4d9c-895d-9454b6343852&search-rank=7
- Hart, Alicia. “Meet Beulah henry, the Inventor.” The Salisbury Post. Sept. 1, 1955. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1026874682/?match=1&terms=%22Beulah%20Henry%22&search-id=be53d62d-90f0-4084-8868-9b0e0a4dbb37&search-rank=3
- Henry, B.L. “DOUBLE CHAIN STITCH SEWING MACHINE.” April 21, 1936. https://ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/downloadPdf/US-2037901-A?source=USPAT&requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiI4NTA2NjMxNi1kZTRmLTRlNzQtOGJhYS1kYTRjMzhhMGZkNmYiLCJ2ZXIiOiJjY2M5MGE0NS02ZGRhLTQ5YTAtOTQzZS1lOTIyMzBhMjI0MjEiLCJleHAiOjB9
- Henry, B.L. “DUPLICATING ATTACHMENT FOR TYPEWRITERS.” Aug. 30, 1932. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e7/a5/7d/a7e3bbcd163f09/US1874749.pdf
- Henry, B.L. “Hand Bag.” U.S. Patent Office. May 27, 1913. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/0a/6d/16/4d8139d4025580/US1063031.pdf
- Henry, B.L. “Ice Cream Freezer.” U.S. Patent Office. Sept. 3, 1912. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/dc/d8/5c/1c61ca65b0339b/US1037762.pdf
- Henry, B.L. “Indicator Top.” U.S. Patent Office. March 2, 1926. https://ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/downloadPdf/US-1575264-A?source=USPAT&requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiIxMzU2NTdlNi03OWNkLTQyZGUtYTgwNi0yYzRhYmM3OGU5OGIiLCJ2ZXIiOiI2MzIxNTg0Yy1iOTZjLTRhYmItOTZhNC04OGUxNTI3ODY3NjUiLCJleHAiOjB9
- Henry, B.L. “Parasol.” U.S. Patent Office. Nov. 18, 1913. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6e/fe/25/726c19533c2b0f/US1079240.pdf
- Henry, B.L. “Parasol.” U.S. Patent Office. May 6, 1924. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/5c/ad/88/868b750b1d9c44/US1492725.pdf
- Henry, B.L. “Radio Doll.” U.S. Patent Office. Dec. 8, 1925. https://ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/downloadPdf/US-1565145-A?source=USPAT&requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiJhMTUwM2E5YS04MzYzLTRmYTgtYjRmOS1lZDU5OGIyMDllNGEiLCJ2ZXIiOiI2MjZkN2M5OS05OGVkLTQzY2EtOGE2YS02NTU2ZWIzYzY0MzgiLCJleHAiOjB9
- Henry, B.L. “SEAM AND METHOD OF FORMING SEAMS.” U.S. Patent Office. Feb 4. 1941. https://ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/downloadPdf/US-2230896-A?source=USPAT&requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiI4NTA2NjMxNi1kZTRmLTRlNzQtOGJhYS1kYTRjMzhhMGZkNmYiLCJ2ZXIiOiJjY2M5MGE0NS02ZGRhLTQ5YTAtOTQzZS1lOTIyMzBhMjI0MjEiLCJleHAiOjB9
- Henry, B.L. “Simulated Dispensing Device.” U.S. Patent Office. Dec. 11, 1951. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/6d/80/75/d6a9df36c75df0/US2577849.pdf
- Henry, B.L. “Water Sport Apparatus.” U.S. Patent Office. August 16, 1927. https://ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/downloadPdf/US-1639607-A?source=USPAT&requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiIxMzU2NTdlNi03OWNkLTQyZGUtYTgwNi0yYzRhYmM3OGU5OGIiLCJ2ZXIiOiI2MzIxNTg0Yy1iOTZjLTRhYmItOTZhNC04OGUxNTI3ODY3NjUiLCJleHAiOjB9
- Jones, Stacy. “A Single Unit Serves for Mailing and Also Returning.” New York Times. Jan. 27, 1962. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/01/27/90129637.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
- LaRiccia, Dante. “Electricity Consumption: Culture, Gender and Power.” Energy History Online. Yale University. https://energyhistory.yale.edu/electricity-consumption-culture-gender-and-power/
- Mydans, Seth. “Overlooked No More: Beulah Henry, Inventor With an Endless Imagination.” New York Times. March 14, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/obituaries/beulah-henry-overlooked.html
- “Synesthesia.” Cleveland Clinic. May 3, 2023. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24995-synesthesia
- “"There's a better way of doing that." USPTO. https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/journeys-innovation/historical-stories/theres-better-way-doing
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Crazy B. Wilson. I don't fully know
how I came across this person as a topic today,
this happens to me sometimes. I was noodling around for things,
(00:26):
as I often do, because I'm trying to make like
a pretty comprehensive list, which I don't always do for
the next couple of months because both of us have
travel and we're heading into holiday season and like autumn
is my crazy time anyway, So I'm trying to, you know,
come up with my list that's the go to's will
be ready. And I somehow came across this newspaper photo
(00:46):
while I was probably looking at something else, and it
was this woman named Beulah Henry, and I was captivated.
She had this gorgeous wide brim black hat on and
the headline was about her being an inventor, and like, what,
this is clearly my kind of lady. Then I was
very chagrined to discover that that write up speaks ill
(01:09):
of her style and says that she's got an old
fashioned mode of dress. And I was like, oh, she's
got style. It's never old fashion. But anyway, I then
became fixated on Beulah Henry. And Beulah was such a
prolific inventor in the twentieth century, in the early twentieth
century that the press actually nicknamed her Lady Edison, which
(01:29):
was a name she didn't actually like. She was an outlier,
and that she was an unmarried woman who truly got
her foot in the door as an inventor by pounding
the pavement in nineteen twenties New York trying to find
fabricators who could help her bring her sometimes seemingly outlandish
ideas to life. And once she did find people that
(01:52):
she could work with, she maintained a lot of those
relationships long term, and she kind of ran her operation
of being a full time inventor like a well oiled machine.
And she always claimed that she just couldn't help it.
She once told a reporter quote, I invent because I
cannot help it. New things just thrust themselves upon me.
So we're going to talk about Beulah Henry today. Beulah
(02:15):
Louise Henry was born on September twenty eighth, eighteen eighty
seven in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her family is often described
as living in Charlotte, North Carolina. That's about one hundred
and seventy miles away, although her grandmother did live in Raleigh,
and it seems like she spent some time in both
places as a kid. Her father, Walter Henry, was an
(02:36):
attorney and her mother, Beulah Holden Henry, was a homemaker.
Some accounts say that her mother was an artist, but
that's not fully clear. Beulah is always described as an
observant and creative child, although it's worth noting that most
of those accounts are based on descriptions she gave of
herself to the press later in her life. Her first
(02:59):
idea that hinted at her having a future as an
inventor came when she was just six years old. She
was watching a flag being lowered from a post office flagpole.
She noticed that sometimes the flag grazed the ground, and
the US Flag Code states that quote the flag should
never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water,
(03:22):
or merchandise. Talk about this a bit more on Friday.
So Beulah came up with an idea to prevent the
flag from touching the ground. Quote, there should be a
hole right through that pole, so the flag could drop
through and never touch the ground. I have to confess,
I don't understand how this would work. I have to
confess I spent a long time really puzzling over this myself,
(03:45):
and I don't know one hundred percent. But I think
what she's getting at is that the pole should somehow
be hollows so the flag could be pulled in. But
I'm not positive about that. And again she's relaying what
she remembered her six year old self saying. So nobody
ever seemed to follow up, like, what do you mean, Beulah.
They're like, oh, inventive six year old, hooray. So we
(04:09):
don't know. I can't. If you out there in our
audience can think of a way that this would function
that is not a hollow pole, bring it home, Send
us a sketch. She continued to sketch things allegedly as
a kid, but when she was nine years old, Beulah
created her first invention, and this was a hands free
(04:31):
device that would enable the wearer to do various things
like maintain social decorum by tipping their hat, or carry
groceries even if their hands were full because they were
carrying a newspaper, which seems like a sort of charming
problem for a nine year old to think needs solving.
Beulah's solution was a belt that had a paper holder
(04:51):
attached to it. Again, we don't know exactly how this
worked or what she was intending. I'm like, is there
a way? Does she think you just put the paper down?
Is she imagining you're holding it open to read? I
don't know. I had just kind of a go go
gadget arm maybe imagination where there would be a holder
(05:14):
holding the paper open while you were doing your other
things with your anatomical hands. Yeah, maybe, I don't know.
But also, if that's the case, you shouldn't be walking
around holding reading a paper. But listen, this never got
past the prototype stage for whatever her nine year old
build was. I would yearn to see what that looked like,
(05:36):
but it does evidence Beulah's inventive and creative approach to
solving what she considered to be everyday problems. After high school,
she attended Queen's College and Elizabeth College in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After she graduated, she and her family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
While she was still a college student. Ula Henry applied
(05:57):
for and was granted her first patent four setup. This
is a time when ice was not as readily available
to consumers. You could not freeze your own ice. You
had to have it delivered. So if you wanted to
make ice cream at home, you could really blaze through
your ice supply, and Beulah wanted a more efficient way.
(06:18):
Per her patent quote, this invention relates to ice cream
freezers and has for an object to provide a freezer
which will include a freezing chamber surrounded by an insulating
walled structure so that a freezing temperature in the freezing
chamber can be effectively retained to affect a rapid freezing
of the cream with a minimum expenditure of ice. Another
(06:41):
object of the invention is to provide a freezer that
can be readily and effectively used as a water cooler.
This was a somewhat novel patent in that it could
be hand cranked or motor cranked if the user had
access to electricity. That was not actually common in most
homes at the time. In nineteen ten, only one in
(07:02):
seven homes in the US had electricity. That patent was
granted in nineteen twelve, so Beula was very forward thinking
with that motor option. She applied for another patent at
the same time, which was a multi use parasol. This
one is really kind of cool. I'm a little bit
in love with it. So the patent for it reads,
(07:22):
quote the general objects of the invention are to adapt
a sunshade or parasol to be folded into a comparatively
small compass when not in use, and to combine a
vanity case with the handle thereof. So in the tip
of the parasol, like the top tip of you held
it open, it's the part that's at the top was
a compass, so once you had it folded down, you
(07:43):
could just hold your thing and use that compass. And
then the handle contained quote a chamber formed in the
handle section of the stick. Said chamber being interiorly divided
into compartments adapted for the reception of coins of different
denial nations or sizes, and further subdivided into covered compartments
(08:05):
adapted to contain face, powder and the like. So the
handle of the parasol consisted of this beautiful at least
in the patent application drawings, little hinged box that was,
you know, kind of a rectangle, and when it opened
it was like a streamlined coin purse and makeup compact.
(08:26):
I'm in love with this thing. She received the patent
on this one a couple of months after the ice
maker patent. The following year she patented another invention having
to do with style, and that was a handbag. The
goal of this invention was to enable people who carried
handbags to always match their purse to their style. It
was described in the patent this way quote. This invention
(08:49):
relates to handbags, and one of the principal objects of
the invention is to provide a device of this character
having interchangeable covers, whereby the same may be used with
gowns of different shades, thereby avoiding the necessity of having
a number of handbags and of using a handbag of
some color that does not match with the gown being worn.
(09:11):
A further object of the invention is to provide a
handbag of this character which consists of a frame having
an ordinary bag secured there too in the usual manner,
and a covering adapted to be removably attached to said bags,
so that coverings of different color or material may be used,
and so that a removable cover is provided for toilet
(09:32):
and shopping requisites, carried by the outside of the bag,
so as to leave the inside of the purse free
to receive other articles. This is one of those things
that was so novel at the time, and you still
see these kinds of handbags marketed today. After college, and
after spending a few years in Memphis, Beulah and her
(09:52):
mother moved to New York City. Some accounts of her life,
including one published online by the US Patent Office, state
that a whole family moved to New York, But it
was to me until this morning, a little unclear what
was going on regarding her father. Tracy had access to
some records that her father must have moved with them
because he died in New York in nineteen thirty five,
(10:14):
so he was there. But it's a little bit interesting
because even when he would have been there, there were
newspaper reports about Beulah, and they always referenced her and
her mother and never her father, So it's not clear.
Maybe he just didn't want to be in the public eye,
maybe he was getting older and just didn't feel up
(10:35):
to it. Unclear, but he was with them at least
for the first part of this move. Her mother ended
up living with Beulah for most of the rest of
her life, and she actually said to a reporter in
nineteen twenty three, quote, I don't know what to make
of her. She gets up at night and prowls around,
making experiments with the electric lights and the water system,
(10:56):
or hunting for sheets of brown paper to draw on
or cut up. In nineteen twenty one, Beulah revisited the parasol,
this time hearkening back to her customizable purse accessory. This
parasol had changeable covers so that it too, could match
your outfit. This particular invention, refined in the new patent,
(11:16):
was a bigger success in nineteen twenty one, when Beulah
had some experience than it had been back in nineteen
thirteen when she was still a student with no capital.
This time she was able to get her parasol into
production through her new business, the Henry Umbrella and Parasol Company,
and it was a hit, but she faced a lot
of resistance when trying to get fabricators to take her seriously.
(11:41):
She later described going to numerous umbrella manufacturers and explaining
her invention to them, only to be told that it
was going to be impossible to actually make it. She
later told a reporter quote, everyone said it wouldn't work
piercing steel ribs with the snaps necessary to hold the
covers in place. Even the model makers refused to try.
(12:03):
So she took matters into her own hands, and she
made her own rudimentary prototype to show one of the
manufacturers exactly what she wanted in this work. She got
it to work basically the way she wanted, at least
for demonstration, and the man that she spoke with when
she brought him this version of hers admitted that it
(12:23):
was something that could be done, and he said that
he wanted to be the one to make them. She
later said of this moment, quote, I knew then that
I had won. After it went into production, this parasol
was really popular. It got the interest of a lot
of large retailers. I read one account that said that
it was a whole window display. I think it like
a Lord and Taylor. Coming up, we'll talk about how
(12:45):
Bulip harleyed that success into a lifelong career, but first
we will pause for a sponsor break. The success of
the changeable cover parasol gave Beulah Henry the confidence to
(13:06):
make New York her permanent home. She wanted to establish
a place there in the city that could be both
a residence and a business office, so she rented hotel
suites to serve as temporary bases of operation, out of
which she ran the company that she established, the bl
Henry Company. And I call them temporary because even though
(13:26):
she lived in and decorated these suites as more or
less permanent residences, she did move from hotel to hotel
from time to time, and the biggest driver in the
selection of her hotel locations was proximity to manufacturers, also
engineers and attorneys that she would need because she was
patenting everything she invented, and she recognized that she did
(13:49):
not have the expertise to build all of the things
that she dreamed up. She didn't have any training as
an engineer or a fabricator. We'll talk about that some
more later, and she certainly did not know anything about
patent law. So she assembled a team of people who
had the skills that she did not to execute her
visions and to protect her interests. Henry was also interested
(14:10):
in diversifying. It was not as though she wanted to
make her whole living from umbrellas only. And her next
area of interest was toys. In nineteen twenty five, she
received a patent for an improvement to plush toys that
added springs to them. The invention was the core of
the toy, which was intended to be licensed to manufacturers
(14:33):
so that they could make toys that children could pose,
and then those toys would spring back to their original
neutral position. Choosing to market her ideas to manufacturers instead
of trying to make a consumer goods item was a
very lucrative move, and from these early inventions on she
was very smart about how she used the money that
(14:54):
she made from these deals. She invested her profits into
herself and her business and into paying her team and
into funding the next invention or series of them. Always
and she ran her hotel suite operation on this rolling basis.
This way, so she would have a new idea, she
would pass it off to you draftsmen and prototype fabricators
(15:17):
as soon as they had finished the previous thing she
had them working on, and then that project would move
on to the patent attorney once they had finished with it.
For right up and filing, and all the while Beulah
was coming up with new ideas and feeding those draftsmen
and fabricators again, and it just kept going in this
ongoing loop. Okay, these were not always easy handoffs, though.
(15:37):
Beula once told a reporter quote, I say to the engineers,
build me such and such, and they say to me,
Miss Henry, it couldn't possibly work. And I say to them,
I don't know if it will work, but I'm looking
at it. And so they build it and it works.
Just to be clear, when she said I'm looking at it,
she meant in her mind. So without trying to take
(16:00):
away from her ability to come up with the good
and creative ideas, a lot of the heavy lifting was
being done by the team that she trusted to figure
out how to make those ideas actually exist after being
formed with really no understanding of what kind of engineering
they might require. And she managed to patent about two
patents a year with this team. Yeah, there was one year.
(16:23):
I think she got as many as four, but they
were really like, you want to do what now, Okay,
We're going to go figure out how to try to
make this work. Staying in the realm, of toys. Henry
invented a doll that was also a radio, and she
received a patent for that in late nineteen twenty five.
Her invention describes quote a doll within which is supported
(16:43):
a part or all of a complete radio apparatus. It
also specifies that the radio apparatus is hidden from view
but remains quote capable of ready manipulation for the purposes
of adjusting the set. Additional features were that the radio
could be quote readily mounted within the doll and removed
therefrom at will, that it had to quote fulfill all
(17:06):
the functions of a high class radio set, and that
it had to be quote exceedingly attractive to children. In
nineteen twenty six, Bulla invented an item which you could
argue was maybe not all that necessary. I went and
looked at the patent for this because I was like,
what is she actually describing here? So this was her
indicator top. This was the spinning top that was meant
(17:27):
to replace dice in games of chance, So instead of
rolling a die, you would spin this top. And there
were different colors, different numbers in this six part top.
Apparently there were little the balls that made the colors.
You could swap them out, but this would be in
lieu of the pips that represented numerical values on dice.
(17:52):
The reason that this honestly seems kind of needless to
me is that it was still six instead of six
faces of a die, You've had six different color options.
Maybe it could be cool for like specific games manufacturers
making some kind of customizable thing, but still at the core,
incredibly similar to the six faces of a die. With
(18:15):
this six colors on the faces of a top. Yeah,
if it will help you to visualize it for anybody listening, like,
it was like a six sided dradle kind of but
in the nature, and so you would spin it where
it landed face it just I'd like Tracy was reading
through the patent and going, why would you select this
(18:36):
over a die unless you just prefer colors to pips. Yeah,
you could also make a die with six different colors
on the faces. I'm gonna say, knowing a friend who
is both involved in creating games and color blind colors
on the faces is not the most accessible way to
do it. Yeah. Uh. Another patent, which was granted on
(19:00):
August sixteenth, nineteen twenty seven, was what she called simply
water sport apparatus, which her patent described this way, quote
a watersport apparatus which is buoyant to sustain a person afloat,
the apparatus having novel structural features permitting a person to
assume a sitting posture, and while in the sitting posture,
(19:20):
to use the legs to propel the apparatus. Another object
of the invention is to provide an apparatus of the
indicated character for youngsters unable to swim, to safely sustain
a youngster afloat for enjoying the pleasurable benefits of being
in the water. That description all sounds kind of dry,
but the diagrams are adorable. It's sort of like a
(19:43):
basic sling that's mounted on two poles, so a pole
would be on either side of your body if you're
sitting in it. But then it has a back little
ledge that you can kind of recline onto you, and
there are three inflatable balls attached to the back for buoyancy,
and then the front also has an inflatable ball, but
the top of that one extends upward out of the
(20:03):
water to look like a swan. It's so cute. I
kind of want one, so a user could sit in
the sling and kick their feet about without having to
worry about staying afloat and admiring their beautiful swan. As
her list of patents grew, so did her public profile.
Because of her unique life story and really self guided career,
(20:26):
reporters often asked to interview her. She gave a lot
of really good quotes. One thing that she frequently told
reporters was the explanation for her unique ability to envision
things that even she did not fully understand. She said
that she had synesthesia. That's a condition where the brain
processes sensory information from unrelated senses. So for someone with synesthesia,
(20:53):
a color might have a taste, or a number might
have a color. It's a sensory crossover phenomenon. But it's
not considered to be a medical condition. Yeah, a lot
of write ups about her describe her as you know,
having this condition or in some cases even suffering from
this condition, and that's not medically how it's ever talked about.
So I wanted to make sure we noted that. And
(21:15):
in Beulah's case, she said that her synesthesia was something
that she had quote one million percent, and that her
brain's tendency to perceive seemingly unrelated and unconnected things in
a way that group them together was part of how
she could see finish solutions to common problems in the
form of a fully complete invention. She always described seeing
(21:37):
in her mind the full invention kind of in a flash.
She also stated in the nineteen thirties that she believed
in spirit control and that she thought a guiding spirit
often brought her these ideas. Beulah, like most people in
the nineteen thirties who ran businesses, faced a drop in
her revenue. So for me at least, it's easy to
(21:59):
wonder if she didn't start saying sort of outlandish things
as a way to bolster her name recognition and thus
her business. In addition to saying a lot of very
quotable things, the way Beulah lived also offered reporters a
lot of material for their pieces. Although she was living
in hotels, she would decorate them when she moved in,
(22:21):
and this was always in a style that was considered
to be hyper feminine. There was a lot of pink.
She also always had pets, turtles, parakeets, orioles, doves, cockatals,
and even a cat's maybe risky with all those birds around,
but maybe they were all secured from one another. She
told a reporter that she loved cats more than inventing
(22:44):
or any of her other pastimes. She also loved astronomy,
and there was a telescope always present in her rooms
near a window so that she could look at the
sky at night, which I love. I did too. One
of the interesting things about Beulah and public persona is
how the media chose to photograph her. She was often
(23:06):
photographed with a baby doll, one of her inventions, in
her lap, and some of these photos even look, if
you just glance at them, as though she is a
mother with a baby, and this may have been an
effort to make her more relatable to the general public,
because Beulah was not a mother. She was not married.
She was a single woman who at that point was
(23:28):
quite wealthy and undeniably successful. But instead of characterizing her
truthfully as a trailblazer who had made a space for
herself in industries where she was often the only woman,
the choice was made to try to make her appear
more like a homemaker, and it seemed almost like writers
wished to hyperfeminize her. In other ways, She was by
(23:50):
all accounts very stereotypically feminine, but one reporter commented that
her work suite looked quote more like a boudoir than
an office. One headlinedcouted Beulah Henry sits in Chiffon Laboratory
inventing almost everything but excuses, and that one actually referred
to her as being quote almost theatrically feminine. Articles often
(24:14):
commented on her soft spoken nature and her charming Southern accent,
and if you start to read a lot of these,
it really kind of seems as though there is this
all cap subtext of hey, you guys, she's a woman.
There's also a weird secondary aspect of this constant focus
on her womanhood that needs to be unpacked. Almost all
(24:36):
of the articles about her in the nineteen thirties comment
on the fact that she had no training in engineering
or mechanics, and she kind of played this up, claiming
that it was actually a benefit to her because she
never thought about the limitations that people who were educated
in those fields might consider. She also often stated that
a lot more women could be successful inventors if they
(24:59):
just had little confidence, sort of not really imagining the
structural barriers to women's successes inventors with that. So on
the one hand, there's kind of a level of encouragement
with that, but there's also definitely a tone throughout all
of the mentions about her lack of mechanical training, that
such things were actually for men, and that her ingenuity
(25:22):
was strictly because of her feminine outlooks. So all of
this is kind of a mixed bag. Yeah. Uh, we
are going to talk about one of our favorite subjects,
certainly one of my favorite subjects, which is sewing machines,
after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history class going. In the second half of
(25:51):
the nineteen thirties, Beulah pivoted her creative problem solving to
sewing machines, and she actually kind of changed the way
the garment industry functioned. Any homesowist knows that home sewing
machines have an upper thread and a bobbin, and so
do a lot of industrial machines even still, and just
for listeners who do not sew, what that means is
(26:13):
that a stitcher has to periodically stop and replace or
refill the bobbin that's on the underside. Bobbins are notorious
for running out of thread right when you're zipping along
through the middle of a seam, and then you find
out when you complete that scene that half of your
work didn't even really happen. It's like, they know, yeah,
(26:34):
I have one. Now. My embroidery machine that I have
does a little like you're almost at a bobbin thread,
so I can stop and fix it before everything goes
to pot. But uh, Beulah, after gazing at a marquee
out of her window that had a unique frame, had
a vision for a new kind of sewing machine that
would solve this problem. So that frame to the sign
(26:57):
was described in a newspaper write up as quote a
ribbon of electric light that played back and forth in
a scallop pattern. So Beulah thought, after watching this light play,
that there was a way for a sewing machine to
operate without needing a bobbin if it kind of mimicked
the way that that frame seemed to twist onto itself.
(27:17):
I've also seen this frame described as being like chain link,
but those two descriptions are so very different that I
don't know what to do with it. But regardless of
which one was the inspiration, whether it was a ribbon
of light or chain link. Beulah claimed that she worked
out the basis of the design in her room after
looking at it, using hairpins in a thread to mimic
(27:40):
the movements that she thought the sewing machine would have
to make to get rid of the bobbin. Her resulting
patent was granted on April twenty first, nineteen thirty six,
and her double chain Stitch Sewing Machine was designed to
quote provide a double chain stitch sewing machine of a
novel construction, wherein rect al and early reciprocating needles operating
(28:02):
alternately in opposite directions produced the double chain stitch formation.
This machine had no bobbin, and, as the description states,
it used a locking chain stitch to sow the fabric.
This was a boon to women who worked in factories
who were often paid by the piece based on their
output volume. Without having to stop for bobbin changes, they
(28:25):
were able to stitch more quickly. This invention predated the
Fair Labor Standards Act in the US, which legally established
minimum wage and overtime pay for most workers by two years.
Today's chain stitch machines and chain stitch embroidery machines have
ULA's Machines, which she refined and updated several times as
(28:47):
their ancestor. Yeah, I am. You know. Chain stitch embroidery
machines are really popular right now. We can talk some
more about that on Friday, because there's an interesting thing.
But yeah, they all kind of go back to this
where she figured out to make it all work together.
But after the success of the chainstitch machine, Beulah Henry
went back to dolls for inspiration, and soon she was
(29:09):
working on dolls that could blink, make noise, and even
move their mouths to speak. As Henry's success grew, she
engaged in philanthropy and supported a number of causes, including
the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Women's
League for Animals, and the New York Microscopical Society. During
World War Two, she stopped inventing. She felt duty bound
(29:33):
to contribute to the war effort, which she did by
working in a machine shop. But when the war ended,
Beulah Henry was right back to work and her invention
to patent pipeline started back up. Yep, she went right
back to that cycle that she had established, and it
was during this post war time that she invented a
very unique and slightly entertaining but also gross, kind of
(29:57):
gross out toy if you're me, called the Milkamoo. This
was a toy cow that had rubber utters and an
internal liquid reservoir, so you could fill it with milk
and then milk your toy cow. In a statement to
a reporter, Beulah explained her inspiration by saying, quote, many
boys and girls in the city never have a chance
(30:17):
to see a real cow, and they think that milk
comes only from bottles. Why when the president of one
of the country's biggest doll companies looked at this toy
after I had made it, he didn't say a thing.
He just walked out with it under his arm. Listen,
you could interpret that as saying like he just wanted
it to go away, But in fact it went into
(30:37):
production and it was a very profitable toy for Henry.
I just have questions about how sanitation. Yeah, Like, I'm
just gonna say, let's say no child ever consumed this milk.
I'm like, that would get gross, and your toy cow
would smell disgusting. I will say, looking at diagrams, it
(30:59):
looks like the utters would come off so you could
clean them. I hope so, but I don't know how
many people were really giving them a proper scrub. Yeah yeah,
just imagining sour milk and it's not good. Yeah. No,
We're jumping backwards a little bit to set up this
next thing, because in nineteen thirty two, Henry had been
(31:19):
granted the patent for a device that the application called
duplicating attachment for typewriters. It also came to be known
as the protograph. But this invention, which was designed to
replace carbon paper, did not get a full scale commercial
launch for more than twenty years. In nineteen fifty five,
(31:39):
which is where we have caught up to on the timeline,
Jula's name was everywhere as she promoted this new product.
She told reporters quote, I invented it because I was
angry one day. I was typing a long letter with
a carbon copy and near the end I discovered it
was turned the wrong way. Crying with exasperation, I tugged
(32:00):
paper out of the machine and it fell on the
floor under the desk. Right then I was determined to
never use carbon paper again. By the time I got
up from under the desk, it was invented. That newspaper
write up, which was printed in papers all over the US,
described the invention as a swinging arm that locked into
place over the typewriter carriage and added two additional ribbons.
(32:25):
Additional sheets of paper could be threaded between those extra
ribbons to create multiple copies of a typewritten document at
once without the need for carbon paper. This is kind
of fascinating because my understanding is that this took a
long time because they had to figure out how it
could work with basically any model of typewriter on the
market at the time, which would be kind of tricky.
(32:47):
The article even touted quote, according to those who are
sponsoring the invention, I don't know who those were, it
would save the US government sixteen thousand dollars a day
for the Pentagon must burn tons of carbon paper daily
to keep information secret. This was no small investment. The
papers reported that Beula's protograph would go to market with
(33:09):
a retail price of sixty nine dollars and fifty cents.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator,
that would be almost nine hundred dollars in twenty twenty six,
so a lot more than just a basic typewriter by itself. Yeah,
definitely another thing that she was marketing to businesses, not
(33:29):
to home consumers. In nineteen sixty two, Beula came up
with an idea that used the concept of how a
percolator worked to create a baster that would keep meats
moist as they roasted. That same year, she also patented
a two way envelope, which was featured in a New
York Time story titled A single unit serves for mailing
(33:52):
and also returning, and that article describes the mailer this
way quote. The invention is a combination mailing in return
envelope that can be manufactured in continuous strips and can
be stuffed and addressed by machine. Now that the patent
is out, Miss Henry expects to receive heavy orders from
utility companies and stores that build long lists of customers.
(34:15):
The recipient tears off one flap, takes out his statement,
inserts his check, pulls out another flap, and seals the
envelope for remailing. That was Henry's forty fifth patent. In
addition to that article, she was also interviewed for The
New York Times for another write up about it, and
That was her last personal appearance and personal interview given
(34:40):
for a large paper. Beulah Henry died on February first,
nineteen seventy three, at the age of eighty five. At
the time, she held more patents than any other woman,
and more than most male inventors did. That number of
patents was forty eight, but she was posthumously granted a
forty ninth. There are some newspaper mentions that state that
(35:02):
she had more than eighty patents, but that appears to
be how many inventions she said she had come up with,
not how many patents she was awarded. Yeah, and even
that number changes from account to account. I've seen some
that are north of one hundred. I'm not sure how
any of that was tracked. I think most people were
just going on whatever she said and they reported it
(35:24):
as fact. In two thousand and six, Beulah Henry was
inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In nineteen
thirty seven, during a period when there was a lot
of coverage of her in the press, a reporter asked
her to make some predictions about the future, and they're
pretty interesting and quite optimistic, so it seemed like a
good place to end her story. That section of the paper,
(35:47):
which is the Rock Island Argus from April eighth of
nineteen thirty seven, reads quote, there will be an express
highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific and an underground subway.
There will be a tube under the ocean to travel
from here to Europe. It will be suspended on a
swinging cable. The point was made that this might make
(36:08):
passengers more seasick than liners do. She dismissed that possibility.
There will be a way to take care of that.
She envisions trains of the future mounted on rubber tires.
Objection to the weight. Objection that the weight of the
trains couldn't be borne by the rubber tires makes her
insist away will be found. I feel like that was
(36:28):
like her life Ethos. Away will be found. Yeah, And
that's Pulah Henry, who is fascinating to me, very stylish,
quite funny, very creative. Sometimes even when you don't need
the thing. That top is gonna haunt me in my dreams.
But I have a listener mail that is not haunting
(36:48):
in the least. It is delightful and solves a thing
that was not clear to me. This is from our listener, Tim,
who writes high Ali and Tracy. I was listening to
your William Huxley episode and had a sudden realist when
you read the passage about the bees entering his room
and how he wished they had landed on his lips.
I realized that must be where the word malif lewis
(37:08):
comes from. Which is the word I'm having trouble saying today,
so apologies. I looked it up at malif Lewis indeed
means flowing with honey. A malif lewis voice belongs to
someone who is honey tongued or sweet lipped. Interestingly, it
has no connection to the word mellow. This explains why
young William would have wanted the bees to land on
his mouth. Just thought you'd like to know. I do
(37:30):
like to know. That's brilliant. Thank you for pet tax.
I have attached a photo of Leita. She came to
us with that name from the ARL, which I'm assuming
is the Animal Rescue League, which we later adapted to
Leeda Lou and then Luby Lou. She happily answers to
all three. Now in the second picture, she's demonstrating how
much she hates hugs, just like all dogs, or so
(37:50):
they say. Then there's little Lady Gray, looking a little
grumpy in both picks. This is not her normal look. Incidentally,
she's named after the Tea rather than the Nine Days Queen.
The second pick is the time she stowed away in
the car and we didn't know until we were miles
from home. Thanks for and keep up the great work.
Best regard to Tim. So little Lita is not that little.
(38:13):
She looks like maybe a border Collie mix, cute as pie,
super duper cute, probably smarter than the rest of us
put together. And of course little Lady Gray, as I
have said recently on the show, of such a soft
spot for a solid gray cat or any cat really,
but I really do like solid gray cats a lot.
So thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your
(38:34):
babies with us, and for solving that puzzle for me. Yeah,
because I didn't that would never have occurred to me
in a million, billion, bazillion years, I would not have
landed there. So thank you for filling that gap that
I could not sure appreciate it. Tim, if you would
like to write to us and solve any questions that
I can't seem to figure out on my own. Maybe
(38:55):
that flagpole thing would be great. If you've got a
way that's figured out, you can do that at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find the
show notes for all of our episodes at mistinhistory dot com.
Click on any episode and you'll see all of the
things we used for reference for it. If you would
like to subscribe to the podcast, you could do so
on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
(39:23):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Crazy B. Wilson. I don't fully know
how I came across this person as a topic today,
this happens to me sometimes. I was noodling around for things,
(00:26):
as I often do, because I'm trying to make like
a pretty comprehensive list, which I don't always do for
the next couple of months because both of us have
travel and we're heading into holiday season and like autumn
is my crazy time anyway, So I'm trying to, you know,
come up with my list that's the go to's will
be ready. And I somehow came across this newspaper photo
(00:46):
while I was probably looking at something else, and it
was this woman named Beulah Henry, and I was captivated.
She had this gorgeous wide brim black hat on and
the headline was about her being an inventor, and like, what,
this is clearly my kind of lady. Then I was
very chagrined to discover that that write up speaks ill
(01:09):
of her style and says that she's got an old
fashioned mode of dress. And I was like, oh, she's
got style. It's never old fashion. But anyway, I then
became fixated on Beulah Henry. And Beulah was such a
prolific inventor in the twentieth century, in the early twentieth
century that the press actually nicknamed her Lady Edison, which
(01:29):
was a name she didn't actually like. She was an outlier,
and that she was an unmarried woman who truly got
her foot in the door as an inventor by pounding
the pavement in nineteen twenties New York trying to find
fabricators who could help her bring her sometimes seemingly outlandish
ideas to life. And once she did find people that
(01:52):
she could work with, she maintained a lot of those
relationships long term, and she kind of ran her operation
of being a full time inventor like a well oiled machine.
And she always claimed that she just couldn't help it.
She once told a reporter quote, I invent because I
cannot help it. New things just thrust themselves upon me.
So we're going to talk about Beulah Henry today. Beulah
(02:15):
Louise Henry was born on September twenty eighth, eighteen eighty
seven in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her family is often described
as living in Charlotte, North Carolina. That's about one hundred
and seventy miles away, although her grandmother did live in Raleigh,
and it seems like she spent some time in both
places as a kid. Her father, Walter Henry, was an
(02:36):
attorney and her mother, Beulah Holden Henry, was a homemaker.
Some accounts say that her mother was an artist, but
that's not fully clear. Beulah is always described as an
observant and creative child, although it's worth noting that most
of those accounts are based on descriptions she gave of
herself to the press later in her life. Her first
(02:59):
idea that hinted at her having a future as an
inventor came when she was just six years old. She
was watching a flag being lowered from a post office flagpole.
She noticed that sometimes the flag grazed the ground, and
the US Flag Code states that quote the flag should
never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water,
(03:22):
or merchandise. Talk about this a bit more on Friday.
So Beulah came up with an idea to prevent the
flag from touching the ground. Quote, there should be a
hole right through that pole, so the flag could drop
through and never touch the ground. I have to confess,
I don't understand how this would work. I have to
confess I spent a long time really puzzling over this myself,
(03:45):
and I don't know one hundred percent. But I think
what she's getting at is that the pole should somehow
be hollows so the flag could be pulled in. But
I'm not positive about that. And again she's relaying what
she remembered her six year old self saying. So nobody
ever seemed to follow up, like, what do you mean, Beulah.
They're like, oh, inventive six year old, hooray. So we
(04:09):
don't know. I can't. If you out there in our
audience can think of a way that this would function
that is not a hollow pole, bring it home, Send
us a sketch. She continued to sketch things allegedly as
a kid, but when she was nine years old, Beulah
created her first invention, and this was a hands free
(04:31):
device that would enable the wearer to do various things
like maintain social decorum by tipping their hat, or carry
groceries even if their hands were full because they were
carrying a newspaper, which seems like a sort of charming
problem for a nine year old to think needs solving.
Beulah's solution was a belt that had a paper holder
(04:51):
attached to it. Again, we don't know exactly how this
worked or what she was intending. I'm like, is there
a way? Does she think you just put the paper down?
Is she imagining you're holding it open to read? I
don't know. I had just kind of a go go
gadget arm maybe imagination where there would be a holder
(05:14):
holding the paper open while you were doing your other
things with your anatomical hands. Yeah, maybe, I don't know.
But also, if that's the case, you shouldn't be walking
around holding reading a paper. But listen, this never got
past the prototype stage for whatever her nine year old
build was. I would yearn to see what that looked like,
(05:36):
but it does evidence Beulah's inventive and creative approach to
solving what she considered to be everyday problems. After high school,
she attended Queen's College and Elizabeth College in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After she graduated, she and her family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
While she was still a college student. Ula Henry applied
(05:57):
for and was granted her first patent four setup. This
is a time when ice was not as readily available
to consumers. You could not freeze your own ice. You
had to have it delivered. So if you wanted to
make ice cream at home, you could really blaze through
your ice supply, and Beulah wanted a more efficient way.
(06:18):
Per her patent quote, this invention relates to ice cream
freezers and has for an object to provide a freezer
which will include a freezing chamber surrounded by an insulating
walled structure so that a freezing temperature in the freezing
chamber can be effectively retained to affect a rapid freezing
of the cream with a minimum expenditure of ice. Another
(06:41):
object of the invention is to provide a freezer that
can be readily and effectively used as a water cooler.
This was a somewhat novel patent in that it could
be hand cranked or motor cranked if the user had
access to electricity. That was not actually common in most
homes at the time. In nineteen ten, only one in
(07:02):
seven homes in the US had electricity. That patent was
granted in nineteen twelve, so Beula was very forward thinking
with that motor option. She applied for another patent at
the same time, which was a multi use parasol. This
one is really kind of cool. I'm a little bit
in love with it. So the patent for it reads,
(07:22):
quote the general objects of the invention are to adapt
a sunshade or parasol to be folded into a comparatively
small compass when not in use, and to combine a
vanity case with the handle thereof. So in the tip
of the parasol, like the top tip of you held
it open, it's the part that's at the top was
a compass, so once you had it folded down, you
(07:43):
could just hold your thing and use that compass. And
then the handle contained quote a chamber formed in the
handle section of the stick. Said chamber being interiorly divided
into compartments adapted for the reception of coins of different
denial nations or sizes, and further subdivided into covered compartments
(08:05):
adapted to contain face, powder and the like. So the
handle of the parasol consisted of this beautiful at least
in the patent application drawings, little hinged box that was,
you know, kind of a rectangle, and when it opened
it was like a streamlined coin purse and makeup compact.
(08:26):
I'm in love with this thing. She received the patent
on this one a couple of months after the ice
maker patent. The following year she patented another invention having
to do with style, and that was a handbag. The
goal of this invention was to enable people who carried
handbags to always match their purse to their style. It
was described in the patent this way quote. This invention
(08:49):
relates to handbags, and one of the principal objects of
the invention is to provide a device of this character
having interchangeable covers, whereby the same may be used with
gowns of different shades, thereby avoiding the necessity of having
a number of handbags and of using a handbag of
some color that does not match with the gown being worn.
(09:11):
A further object of the invention is to provide a
handbag of this character which consists of a frame having
an ordinary bag secured there too in the usual manner,
and a covering adapted to be removably attached to said bags,
so that coverings of different color or material may be used,
and so that a removable cover is provided for toilet
(09:32):
and shopping requisites, carried by the outside of the bag,
so as to leave the inside of the purse free
to receive other articles. This is one of those things
that was so novel at the time, and you still
see these kinds of handbags marketed today. After college, and
after spending a few years in Memphis, Beulah and her
(09:52):
mother moved to New York City. Some accounts of her life,
including one published online by the US Patent Office, state
that a whole family moved to New York, But it
was to me until this morning, a little unclear what
was going on regarding her father. Tracy had access to
some records that her father must have moved with them
because he died in New York in nineteen thirty five,
(10:14):
so he was there. But it's a little bit interesting
because even when he would have been there, there were
newspaper reports about Beulah, and they always referenced her and
her mother and never her father, So it's not clear.
Maybe he just didn't want to be in the public eye,
maybe he was getting older and just didn't feel up
(10:35):
to it. Unclear, but he was with them at least
for the first part of this move. Her mother ended
up living with Beulah for most of the rest of
her life, and she actually said to a reporter in
nineteen twenty three, quote, I don't know what to make
of her. She gets up at night and prowls around,
making experiments with the electric lights and the water system,
(10:56):
or hunting for sheets of brown paper to draw on
or cut up. In nineteen twenty one, Beulah revisited the parasol,
this time hearkening back to her customizable purse accessory. This
parasol had changeable covers so that it too, could match
your outfit. This particular invention, refined in the new patent,
(11:16):
was a bigger success in nineteen twenty one, when Beulah
had some experience than it had been back in nineteen
thirteen when she was still a student with no capital.
This time she was able to get her parasol into
production through her new business, the Henry Umbrella and Parasol Company,
and it was a hit, but she faced a lot
of resistance when trying to get fabricators to take her seriously.
(11:41):
She later described going to numerous umbrella manufacturers and explaining
her invention to them, only to be told that it
was going to be impossible to actually make it. She
later told a reporter quote, everyone said it wouldn't work
piercing steel ribs with the snaps necessary to hold the
covers in place. Even the model makers refused to try.
(12:03):
So she took matters into her own hands, and she
made her own rudimentary prototype to show one of the
manufacturers exactly what she wanted in this work. She got
it to work basically the way she wanted, at least
for demonstration, and the man that she spoke with when
she brought him this version of hers admitted that it
(12:23):
was something that could be done, and he said that
he wanted to be the one to make them. She
later said of this moment, quote, I knew then that
I had won. After it went into production, this parasol
was really popular. It got the interest of a lot
of large retailers. I read one account that said that
it was a whole window display. I think it like
a Lord and Taylor. Coming up, we'll talk about how
(12:45):
Bulip harleyed that success into a lifelong career, but first
we will pause for a sponsor break. The success of
the changeable cover parasol gave Beulah Henry the confidence to
(13:06):
make New York her permanent home. She wanted to establish
a place there in the city that could be both
a residence and a business office, so she rented hotel
suites to serve as temporary bases of operation, out of
which she ran the company that she established, the bl
Henry Company. And I call them temporary because even though
(13:26):
she lived in and decorated these suites as more or
less permanent residences, she did move from hotel to hotel
from time to time, and the biggest driver in the
selection of her hotel locations was proximity to manufacturers, also
engineers and attorneys that she would need because she was
patenting everything she invented, and she recognized that she did
(13:49):
not have the expertise to build all of the things
that she dreamed up. She didn't have any training as
an engineer or a fabricator. We'll talk about that some
more later, and she certainly did not know anything about
patent law. So she assembled a team of people who
had the skills that she did not to execute her
visions and to protect her interests. Henry was also interested
(14:10):
in diversifying. It was not as though she wanted to
make her whole living from umbrellas only. And her next
area of interest was toys. In nineteen twenty five, she
received a patent for an improvement to plush toys that
added springs to them. The invention was the core of
the toy, which was intended to be licensed to manufacturers
(14:33):
so that they could make toys that children could pose,
and then those toys would spring back to their original
neutral position. Choosing to market her ideas to manufacturers instead
of trying to make a consumer goods item was a
very lucrative move, and from these early inventions on she
was very smart about how she used the money that
(14:54):
she made from these deals. She invested her profits into
herself and her business and into paying her team and
into funding the next invention or series of them. Always
and she ran her hotel suite operation on this rolling basis.
This way, so she would have a new idea, she
would pass it off to you draftsmen and prototype fabricators
(15:17):
as soon as they had finished the previous thing she
had them working on, and then that project would move
on to the patent attorney once they had finished with it.
For right up and filing, and all the while Beulah
was coming up with new ideas and feeding those draftsmen
and fabricators again, and it just kept going in this
ongoing loop. Okay, these were not always easy handoffs, though.
(15:37):
Beula once told a reporter quote, I say to the engineers,
build me such and such, and they say to me,
Miss Henry, it couldn't possibly work. And I say to them,
I don't know if it will work, but I'm looking
at it. And so they build it and it works.
Just to be clear, when she said I'm looking at it,
she meant in her mind. So without trying to take
(16:00):
away from her ability to come up with the good
and creative ideas, a lot of the heavy lifting was
being done by the team that she trusted to figure
out how to make those ideas actually exist after being
formed with really no understanding of what kind of engineering
they might require. And she managed to patent about two
patents a year with this team. Yeah, there was one year.
(16:23):
I think she got as many as four, but they
were really like, you want to do what now, Okay,
We're going to go figure out how to try to
make this work. Staying in the realm, of toys. Henry
invented a doll that was also a radio, and she
received a patent for that in late nineteen twenty five.
Her invention describes quote a doll within which is supported
(16:43):
a part or all of a complete radio apparatus. It
also specifies that the radio apparatus is hidden from view
but remains quote capable of ready manipulation for the purposes
of adjusting the set. Additional features were that the radio
could be quote readily mounted within the doll and removed
therefrom at will, that it had to quote fulfill all
(17:06):
the functions of a high class radio set, and that
it had to be quote exceedingly attractive to children. In
nineteen twenty six, Bulla invented an item which you could
argue was maybe not all that necessary. I went and
looked at the patent for this because I was like,
what is she actually describing here? So this was her
indicator top. This was the spinning top that was meant
(17:27):
to replace dice in games of chance, So instead of
rolling a die, you would spin this top. And there
were different colors, different numbers in this six part top.
Apparently there were little the balls that made the colors.
You could swap them out, but this would be in
lieu of the pips that represented numerical values on dice.
(17:52):
The reason that this honestly seems kind of needless to
me is that it was still six instead of six
faces of a die, You've had six different color options.
Maybe it could be cool for like specific games manufacturers
making some kind of customizable thing, but still at the core,
incredibly similar to the six faces of a die. With
(18:15):
this six colors on the faces of a top. Yeah,
if it will help you to visualize it for anybody listening, like,
it was like a six sided dradle kind of but
in the nature, and so you would spin it where
it landed face it just I'd like Tracy was reading
through the patent and going, why would you select this
(18:36):
over a die unless you just prefer colors to pips. Yeah,
you could also make a die with six different colors
on the faces. I'm gonna say, knowing a friend who
is both involved in creating games and color blind colors
on the faces is not the most accessible way to
do it. Yeah. Uh. Another patent, which was granted on
(19:00):
August sixteenth, nineteen twenty seven, was what she called simply
water sport apparatus, which her patent described this way, quote
a watersport apparatus which is buoyant to sustain a person afloat,
the apparatus having novel structural features permitting a person to
assume a sitting posture, and while in the sitting posture,
(19:20):
to use the legs to propel the apparatus. Another object
of the invention is to provide an apparatus of the
indicated character for youngsters unable to swim, to safely sustain
a youngster afloat for enjoying the pleasurable benefits of being
in the water. That description all sounds kind of dry,
but the diagrams are adorable. It's sort of like a
(19:43):
basic sling that's mounted on two poles, so a pole
would be on either side of your body if you're
sitting in it. But then it has a back little
ledge that you can kind of recline onto you, and
there are three inflatable balls attached to the back for buoyancy,
and then the front also has an inflatable ball, but
the top of that one extends upward out of the
(20:03):
water to look like a swan. It's so cute. I
kind of want one, so a user could sit in
the sling and kick their feet about without having to
worry about staying afloat and admiring their beautiful swan. As
her list of patents grew, so did her public profile.
Because of her unique life story and really self guided career,
(20:26):
reporters often asked to interview her. She gave a lot
of really good quotes. One thing that she frequently told
reporters was the explanation for her unique ability to envision
things that even she did not fully understand. She said
that she had synesthesia. That's a condition where the brain
processes sensory information from unrelated senses. So for someone with synesthesia,
(20:53):
a color might have a taste, or a number might
have a color. It's a sensory crossover phenomenon. But it's
not considered to be a medical condition. Yeah, a lot
of write ups about her describe her as you know,
having this condition or in some cases even suffering from
this condition, and that's not medically how it's ever talked about.
So I wanted to make sure we noted that. And
(21:15):
in Beulah's case, she said that her synesthesia was something
that she had quote one million percent, and that her
brain's tendency to perceive seemingly unrelated and unconnected things in
a way that group them together was part of how
she could see finish solutions to common problems in the
form of a fully complete invention. She always described seeing
(21:37):
in her mind the full invention kind of in a flash.
She also stated in the nineteen thirties that she believed
in spirit control and that she thought a guiding spirit
often brought her these ideas. Beulah, like most people in
the nineteen thirties who ran businesses, faced a drop in
her revenue. So for me at least, it's easy to
(21:59):
wonder if she didn't start saying sort of outlandish things
as a way to bolster her name recognition and thus
her business. In addition to saying a lot of very
quotable things, the way Beulah lived also offered reporters a
lot of material for their pieces. Although she was living
in hotels, she would decorate them when she moved in,
(22:21):
and this was always in a style that was considered
to be hyper feminine. There was a lot of pink.
She also always had pets, turtles, parakeets, orioles, doves, cockatals,
and even a cat's maybe risky with all those birds around,
but maybe they were all secured from one another. She
told a reporter that she loved cats more than inventing
(22:44):
or any of her other pastimes. She also loved astronomy,
and there was a telescope always present in her rooms
near a window so that she could look at the
sky at night, which I love. I did too. One
of the interesting things about Beulah and public persona is
how the media chose to photograph her. She was often
(23:06):
photographed with a baby doll, one of her inventions, in
her lap, and some of these photos even look, if
you just glance at them, as though she is a
mother with a baby, and this may have been an
effort to make her more relatable to the general public,
because Beulah was not a mother. She was not married.
She was a single woman who at that point was
(23:28):
quite wealthy and undeniably successful. But instead of characterizing her
truthfully as a trailblazer who had made a space for
herself in industries where she was often the only woman,
the choice was made to try to make her appear
more like a homemaker, and it seemed almost like writers
wished to hyperfeminize her. In other ways, She was by
(23:50):
all accounts very stereotypically feminine, but one reporter commented that
her work suite looked quote more like a boudoir than
an office. One headlinedcouted Beulah Henry sits in Chiffon Laboratory
inventing almost everything but excuses, and that one actually referred
to her as being quote almost theatrically feminine. Articles often
(24:14):
commented on her soft spoken nature and her charming Southern accent,
and if you start to read a lot of these,
it really kind of seems as though there is this
all cap subtext of hey, you guys, she's a woman.
There's also a weird secondary aspect of this constant focus
on her womanhood that needs to be unpacked. Almost all
(24:36):
of the articles about her in the nineteen thirties comment
on the fact that she had no training in engineering
or mechanics, and she kind of played this up, claiming
that it was actually a benefit to her because she
never thought about the limitations that people who were educated
in those fields might consider. She also often stated that
a lot more women could be successful inventors if they
(24:59):
just had little confidence, sort of not really imagining the
structural barriers to women's successes inventors with that. So on
the one hand, there's kind of a level of encouragement
with that, but there's also definitely a tone throughout all
of the mentions about her lack of mechanical training, that
such things were actually for men, and that her ingenuity
(25:22):
was strictly because of her feminine outlooks. So all of
this is kind of a mixed bag. Yeah. Uh, we
are going to talk about one of our favorite subjects,
certainly one of my favorite subjects, which is sewing machines,
after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history class going. In the second half of
(25:51):
the nineteen thirties, Beulah pivoted her creative problem solving to
sewing machines, and she actually kind of changed the way
the garment industry functioned. Any homesowist knows that home sewing
machines have an upper thread and a bobbin, and so
do a lot of industrial machines even still, and just
for listeners who do not sew, what that means is
(26:13):
that a stitcher has to periodically stop and replace or
refill the bobbin that's on the underside. Bobbins are notorious
for running out of thread right when you're zipping along
through the middle of a seam, and then you find
out when you complete that scene that half of your
work didn't even really happen. It's like, they know, yeah,
(26:34):
I have one. Now. My embroidery machine that I have
does a little like you're almost at a bobbin thread,
so I can stop and fix it before everything goes
to pot. But uh, Beulah, after gazing at a marquee
out of her window that had a unique frame, had
a vision for a new kind of sewing machine that
would solve this problem. So that frame to the sign
(26:57):
was described in a newspaper write up as quote a
ribbon of electric light that played back and forth in
a scallop pattern. So Beulah thought, after watching this light play,
that there was a way for a sewing machine to
operate without needing a bobbin if it kind of mimicked
the way that that frame seemed to twist onto itself.
(27:17):
I've also seen this frame described as being like chain link,
but those two descriptions are so very different that I
don't know what to do with it. But regardless of
which one was the inspiration, whether it was a ribbon
of light or chain link. Beulah claimed that she worked
out the basis of the design in her room after
looking at it, using hairpins in a thread to mimic
(27:40):
the movements that she thought the sewing machine would have
to make to get rid of the bobbin. Her resulting
patent was granted on April twenty first, nineteen thirty six,
and her double chain Stitch Sewing Machine was designed to
quote provide a double chain stitch sewing machine of a
novel construction, wherein rect al and early reciprocating needles operating
(28:02):
alternately in opposite directions produced the double chain stitch formation.
This machine had no bobbin, and, as the description states,
it used a locking chain stitch to sow the fabric.
This was a boon to women who worked in factories
who were often paid by the piece based on their
output volume. Without having to stop for bobbin changes, they
(28:25):
were able to stitch more quickly. This invention predated the
Fair Labor Standards Act in the US, which legally established
minimum wage and overtime pay for most workers by two years.
Today's chain stitch machines and chain stitch embroidery machines have
ULA's Machines, which she refined and updated several times as
(28:47):
their ancestor. Yeah, I am. You know. Chain stitch embroidery
machines are really popular right now. We can talk some
more about that on Friday, because there's an interesting thing.
But yeah, they all kind of go back to this
where she figured out to make it all work together.
But after the success of the chainstitch machine, Beulah Henry
went back to dolls for inspiration, and soon she was
(29:09):
working on dolls that could blink, make noise, and even
move their mouths to speak. As Henry's success grew, she
engaged in philanthropy and supported a number of causes, including
the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Women's
League for Animals, and the New York Microscopical Society. During
World War Two, she stopped inventing. She felt duty bound
(29:33):
to contribute to the war effort, which she did by
working in a machine shop. But when the war ended,
Beulah Henry was right back to work and her invention
to patent pipeline started back up. Yep, she went right
back to that cycle that she had established, and it
was during this post war time that she invented a
very unique and slightly entertaining but also gross, kind of
(29:57):
gross out toy if you're me, called the Milkamoo. This
was a toy cow that had rubber utters and an
internal liquid reservoir, so you could fill it with milk
and then milk your toy cow. In a statement to
a reporter, Beulah explained her inspiration by saying, quote, many
boys and girls in the city never have a chance
(30:17):
to see a real cow, and they think that milk
comes only from bottles. Why when the president of one
of the country's biggest doll companies looked at this toy
after I had made it, he didn't say a thing.
He just walked out with it under his arm. Listen,
you could interpret that as saying like he just wanted
it to go away, But in fact it went into
(30:37):
production and it was a very profitable toy for Henry.
I just have questions about how sanitation. Yeah, Like, I'm
just gonna say, let's say no child ever consumed this milk.
I'm like, that would get gross, and your toy cow
would smell disgusting. I will say, looking at diagrams, it
(30:59):
looks like the utters would come off so you could
clean them. I hope so, but I don't know how
many people were really giving them a proper scrub. Yeah yeah,
just imagining sour milk and it's not good. Yeah. No,
We're jumping backwards a little bit to set up this
next thing, because in nineteen thirty two, Henry had been
(31:19):
granted the patent for a device that the application called
duplicating attachment for typewriters. It also came to be known
as the protograph. But this invention, which was designed to
replace carbon paper, did not get a full scale commercial
launch for more than twenty years. In nineteen fifty five,
(31:39):
which is where we have caught up to on the timeline,
Jula's name was everywhere as she promoted this new product.
She told reporters quote, I invented it because I was
angry one day. I was typing a long letter with
a carbon copy and near the end I discovered it
was turned the wrong way. Crying with exasperation, I tugged
(32:00):
paper out of the machine and it fell on the
floor under the desk. Right then I was determined to
never use carbon paper again. By the time I got
up from under the desk, it was invented. That newspaper
write up, which was printed in papers all over the US,
described the invention as a swinging arm that locked into
place over the typewriter carriage and added two additional ribbons.
(32:25):
Additional sheets of paper could be threaded between those extra
ribbons to create multiple copies of a typewritten document at
once without the need for carbon paper. This is kind
of fascinating because my understanding is that this took a
long time because they had to figure out how it
could work with basically any model of typewriter on the
market at the time, which would be kind of tricky.
(32:47):
The article even touted quote, according to those who are
sponsoring the invention, I don't know who those were, it
would save the US government sixteen thousand dollars a day
for the Pentagon must burn tons of carbon paper daily
to keep information secret. This was no small investment. The
papers reported that Beula's protograph would go to market with
(33:09):
a retail price of sixty nine dollars and fifty cents.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator,
that would be almost nine hundred dollars in twenty twenty six,
so a lot more than just a basic typewriter by itself. Yeah,
definitely another thing that she was marketing to businesses, not
(33:29):
to home consumers. In nineteen sixty two, Beula came up
with an idea that used the concept of how a
percolator worked to create a baster that would keep meats
moist as they roasted. That same year, she also patented
a two way envelope, which was featured in a New
York Time story titled A single unit serves for mailing
(33:52):
and also returning, and that article describes the mailer this
way quote. The invention is a combination mailing in return
envelope that can be manufactured in continuous strips and can
be stuffed and addressed by machine. Now that the patent
is out, Miss Henry expects to receive heavy orders from
utility companies and stores that build long lists of customers.
(34:15):
The recipient tears off one flap, takes out his statement,
inserts his check, pulls out another flap, and seals the
envelope for remailing. That was Henry's forty fifth patent. In
addition to that article, she was also interviewed for The
New York Times for another write up about it, and
That was her last personal appearance and personal interview given
(34:40):
for a large paper. Beulah Henry died on February first,
nineteen seventy three, at the age of eighty five. At
the time, she held more patents than any other woman,
and more than most male inventors did. That number of
patents was forty eight, but she was posthumously granted a
forty ninth. There are some newspaper mentions that state that
(35:02):
she had more than eighty patents, but that appears to
be how many inventions she said she had come up with,
not how many patents she was awarded. Yeah, and even
that number changes from account to account. I've seen some
that are north of one hundred. I'm not sure how
any of that was tracked. I think most people were
just going on whatever she said and they reported it
(35:24):
as fact. In two thousand and six, Beulah Henry was
inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In nineteen
thirty seven, during a period when there was a lot
of coverage of her in the press, a reporter asked
her to make some predictions about the future, and they're
pretty interesting and quite optimistic, so it seemed like a
good place to end her story. That section of the paper,
(35:47):
which is the Rock Island Argus from April eighth of
nineteen thirty seven, reads quote, there will be an express
highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific and an underground subway.
There will be a tube under the ocean to travel
from here to Europe. It will be suspended on a
swinging cable. The point was made that this might make
(36:08):
passengers more seasick than liners do. She dismissed that possibility.
There will be a way to take care of that.
She envisions trains of the future mounted on rubber tires.
Objection to the weight. Objection that the weight of the
trains couldn't be borne by the rubber tires makes her
insist away will be found. I feel like that was
(36:28):
like her life Ethos. Away will be found. Yeah, And
that's Pulah Henry, who is fascinating to me, very stylish,
quite funny, very creative. Sometimes even when you don't need
the thing. That top is gonna haunt me in my dreams.
But I have a listener mail that is not haunting
(36:48):
in the least. It is delightful and solves a thing
that was not clear to me. This is from our listener, Tim,
who writes high Ali and Tracy. I was listening to
your William Huxley episode and had a sudden realist when
you read the passage about the bees entering his room
and how he wished they had landed on his lips.
I realized that must be where the word malif lewis
(37:08):
comes from. Which is the word I'm having trouble saying today,
so apologies. I looked it up at malif Lewis indeed
means flowing with honey. A malif lewis voice belongs to
someone who is honey tongued or sweet lipped. Interestingly, it
has no connection to the word mellow. This explains why
young William would have wanted the bees to land on
his mouth. Just thought you'd like to know. I do
(37:30):
like to know. That's brilliant. Thank you for pet tax.
I have attached a photo of Leita. She came to
us with that name from the ARL, which I'm assuming
is the Animal Rescue League, which we later adapted to
Leeda Lou and then Luby Lou. She happily answers to
all three. Now in the second picture, she's demonstrating how
much she hates hugs, just like all dogs, or so
(37:50):
they say. Then there's little Lady Gray, looking a little
grumpy in both picks. This is not her normal look. Incidentally,
she's named after the Tea rather than the Nine Days Queen.
The second pick is the time she stowed away in
the car and we didn't know until we were miles
from home. Thanks for and keep up the great work.
Best regard to Tim. So little Lita is not that little.
(38:13):
She looks like maybe a border Collie mix, cute as pie,
super duper cute, probably smarter than the rest of us
put together. And of course little Lady Gray, as I
have said recently on the show, of such a soft
spot for a solid gray cat or any cat really,
but I really do like solid gray cats a lot.
So thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your
(38:34):
babies with us, and for solving that puzzle for me. Yeah,
because I didn't that would never have occurred to me
in a million, billion, bazillion years, I would not have
landed there. So thank you for filling that gap that
I could not sure appreciate it. Tim, if you would
like to write to us and solve any questions that
I can't seem to figure out on my own. Maybe
(38:55):
that flagpole thing would be great. If you've got a
way that's figured out, you can do that at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find the
show notes for all of our episodes at mistinhistory dot com.
Click on any episode and you'll see all of the
things we used for reference for it. If you would
like to subscribe to the podcast, you could do so
on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
(39:23):
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