This Women’s History Month, we looked back at some of the most famous inventions made by women throughout history, and how they came to be.
Some inventions, like the chocolate-chip cookie, were invented by accident. Others, however, were worked on for years before they gained international acclaim. In some cases, inventions created by women were copied by other inventors and became the profitable household products we know today.
Here are 20 things you might not know were invented by women.
Glass aquariums were invented by Jeanne Villepreux-Power in 1832.
Villepreux-Power, a naturalist and marine biologist, invented the first glass aquarium to aid in her study of aquatic organisms, Britannica reported.
The invention allowed her to determine that Argonauta argo, a species of octopus, produces its own shells rather than obtaining them from other animals, as hermit crabs do.
Villepreux-Power’s invention of a glass aquarium has proven invaluable to scientists for over a century.
In 1843, Nancy Johnson created the first hand-cranked ice-cream maker.
Johnson’s ice cream maker consisted of an outer wooden pail, an inner tin cylinder, and a paddle connected to a crank.
To make ice cream, you had to fill the outer pail with crushed ice, fill the inner cylinder with ice cream mix, and manually crank a handle to churn the mixture while the ice cooled and set the ice cream.
Her patent was approved on September 9, 1843, almost 100 years before freezers, as we know them today, were invented.
The modern ironing board was invented by Sarah Boone, a 19th-century African American dressmaker.
Before Boone’s invention, women’s garments were traditionally ironed across a wooden plank set upon two chairs. Boone wanted to create a board that could be slipped underneath sleeves to get an even iron, without the impressions that wooden boards often left behind.
With the invention of the ironing board, which Boone described as an effort to “produce a cheap, simple, convenient and highly effective device, particularly adapted to be used in ironing the sleeves and bodies of ladies’ garments,” she became one of the first African American women to be awarded a patent, Biography reported.
With the rise of multilevel buildings resulting in deaths from fires, Anna Connelly submitted the idea of exterior fire escapes to the patent office.
Connelly’s invention in 1887 allowed people escaping fires to move from one building to another and climb down buildings on a steel staircase.
The invention was also valuable to firefighters, who could use platforms to hoist their equipment up the sides of buildings to fight fires without entering.
Collapsible life rafts, invented by Maria Beasley, revolutionized transatlantic travel safety.
Beasley patented her first invention of collapsible life rafts in 1880, according to the University of Edinburgh, though by that time she was a well-known entrepreneur and inventor.
Her rafts took up less space than traditional wooden lifeboats, which were used on the Titanic’s fateful voyage. Each raft could hold up to 47 people and introduced the idea of guard rails, which are commonplace in modern life-raft designs, per St Mary’s College.
Some have claimed that Beasley’s life rafts were, in fact, used to evacuate passengers on the Titanic, but author David H. Cropley negated this in his book, “Femina Problematis Solvendis ― Problem-Solving Woman: A History of the Creativity of Women.”
“In fact, if the four collapsible lifeboats carried on the Titanic were versions of Beasley’s design, then something went badly wrong,” Cropley wrote. “Only two were launched shortly before the vessels sank.”
Shark repellent was invented by none other than famous American chef Julia Child.
Biography reported that Child moved to Washington, DC, after being fired from her job in the advertising department of home-furnishings company W. & J. Sloane and before starting her journey as a chef.
Once she arrived, she began volunteering as a research assistant for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a newly formed government intelligence agency that would eventually become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
During her time at the OSS, Child developed a shark repellent and facilitated the communication of important, top-secret documents between US government officials and their intelligence officers, per History.com.
Josephine Cochrane invented the first commercially successful dishwasher in the 1880s.
Cochrane was a wealthy woman who wanted a machine that could wash dishes “faster than her servants” could, Smithsonian Magazine reported.
After she was granted a patent for her dishwasher, she marketed the machine to restaurants and hotels. Later, Cochrane founded a company for her dishwashers that eventually became KitchenAid.
Alabama native Mary Anderson came up with the idea for windshield wipers when she visited New York City on a snowy day in 1902.
Anderson’s great-great-niece, Reverend Sara-Scott Wingo, told NPR that Anderson was riding a streetcar that day in New York City. After noticing that the snow caused traffic jams, since there was no efficient way to clean windshields at the time, she began brainstorming ideas for a wiper.
Anderson received a patent for her “window cleaning device” in 1903.
In 1965, Stephanie Kwolek developed a synthetic fiber that was so strong that it was bulletproof.
The New York Times reported that when Kwolek started working at the DuPont Company in 1964, her team was focused on finding a strong yet lightweight fiber for tires.
One year later, she made an unexpected breakthrough in her research when she created a new fiber that was five times stronger than steel. DuPont patented the fiber that same year under the name Kevlar, which is now used in everything from bulletproof vests to military helmets to racing sails.
In 1995, Kwolek became the fourth woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Elizabeth Magie invented “The Landlord’s Game” in 1904. It was copied and sold as “Monopoly” 30 years later.
Magie created “The Landlord’s Game” in order to teach people about monopolies, unchecked capitalism, and the “evils of accruing vast sums of wealth at the expense of others,” Smithsonian Magazine reported. She was granted a patent for the game in 1904.
In 1935, an unemployed heating salesman named Charles Darrow became incredibly wealthy after selling a copy of Magie’s game to the Parker Brothers. Magie, on the other hand, sold her patent to the Parker Brothers for just $500 that same year.
Shirley Ann Jackson’s breakthroughs in telecommunications research led to the invention of caller ID and call waiting.
With a PhD in theoretical elementary particle physics, Jackson was one of the first African-American women to receive a doctorate from MIT in any field, the university said.
From 1976 to 1991, Jackson conducted research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where she helped contribute to the development of caller ID and call waiting.
In 2016, then-President Barack Obama awarded Jackson the highest honor for scientific achievement in the US, the National Medal of Science.
With colleague George Hitchings, Gertrude Elion developed some of the first drugs for treating diseases such as leukemia, herpes, and AIDS.
The American Chemical Society reported that Elion and Hitchings developed a method known as “rational drug design” that helped revolutionize drug making.
Their research allowed them to successfully interfere with cell growth, which led to the development of the first effective drugs for treating leukemia and several other illnesses.
Elion also discovered azathioprine, an immunosuppressant that made it possible for people with weak immune systems to receive organ transplants.
Cotton mill worker Margaret Knight invented the paper bag in 1868, but a man named Charles Annan tried to steal and patent her idea first.
Knight’s knack for innovation started at a young age. When she was just 12 years old, she invented a safety device for cotton mills, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers reported.
During her time at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in 1867, Knight began working on a machine that created flat-bottomed bags. When fellow machinist Charles Annan tried to steal her idea, Knight sued him and won the patent for her machine after a long legal battle.
In the early 1900s, Lillian Gilbreth tweaked and designed dozens of inventions that improved people’s everyday lives, including the foot-pedal trash can.
Gilbreth invented the shelves inside refrigerator doors, filed a patent for an improved can opener, helped General Electric design the proper height for kitchen fixtures, and created other inventions, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Together with her husband, Frank, Lillian also pioneered several industrial management techniques designed to increase efficiency and productivity.
The couple had 12 children, two of whom wrote a famous book about their family’s life called “Cheaper by the Dozen.”
Grace Murray Hopper helped program the first computers.
Considered one of the first three modern programmers, Hopper made trailblazing breakthroughs in the development of computer languages.
A rear admiral in the US Navy, she is probably best known for inventing COBOL, or “common business-oriented language” in 1959, Yale News reported. By the 1970s, COBOL was the “most extensively used computer language” in the world. It was also the first user-friendly computer software for businesses.
In 2016, Hopper was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, for her contributions to the field of computer science.
In the early 1990s, Fiona Wood revolutionized medical treatment for burn victims when she created spray-on skin.
In 1993, Wood began working with medical scientist Marie Stoner on a method to grow skin tissue directly on patients instead of in a culture flask, the Australian Academy of Science reported.
The duo launched ReCell, “a spray-on solution of skin cells” two years later. In 2002, ReCell gained international attention after Wood used it to treat severely burned victims of the 2002 terrorist attack in Bali, Indonesia, Vice reported.
An accomplished engineer, Dr. Katharine Burr Blodgett made several important contributions to surface chemistry including the invention of non-reflective or “invisible” glass.
The first woman to receive a doctorate in physics from Cambridge University, Blodgett created non-reflective coatings for eyeglasses and improved cinematography lenses, according to the University of Cambridge.
During WWII, she also made improvements to the smokescreen that helped protect soldiers from toxic smoke exposure.
When Marion Donovan invented the disposable diaper, she was initially mocked by the men who dominated the manufacturing industry at the time.
MIT reported that in 1946, Donovan designed a waterproof diaper cover using nylon parachute cloth and plastic snaps. The diaper cover, which Donovan called the “Boater,” debuted at NYC’s Saks Fifth Avenue in 1949. It was an instant hit.
Sadly, Donovan’s disposable paper diaper, which she invented in the 1950s, never took off. It wasn’t until a decade later that Victor Mills, the creator of Pampers, eventually capitalized on her idea.
Marie Van Brittan Brown invented the first home security system in the 1960s.
Van Brittan Brown, who worked as a nurse, came up with the idea of a home security system after seeing the rising crime rates and slow police responses in her neighborhood in Queens, New York City, BBC reported.
MIT reported that she and her husband, Albert Brown, an electronics technician, filed a patent for their security device in 1966, and it was approved three years later in 1969.
Ruth Wakefield invented the first chocolate chip cookie as a result of a baking mistake.
In 1930, Wakefield and her husband bought a tourist lodge in Whitman, Massachusetts, called the Toll House Inn. One day, while baking cookies, she realized she was out of baker’s chocolate and used a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar instead, thinking that it would melt into the mix, All Recipes reported.
However, the chopped-up pieces of chocolate stayed intact, and the chocolate-chip cookie was thus born.
Wakefield went on to call the cookies Chocolate Crunch Cookies and the recipe ended up in a local Boston newspaper, Yankee Magazine reported. The recipe became so popular that Nestlé began printing it on the wrapper of its chocolate bars.
Lucy Yang contributed to an earlier version of this post.
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