To call Ann Moore an inventor is simply wrong. If title of the photo essay was "Innovative Businesswomen Who Changed the World," she would fit right in. But she did not invent anything.

When we look into it, there are several women inventors that we never hear about.  Thank you for running this article.  http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blkidprimer6_12w.htm

 

Gertrude Elion was a feisty poppet.  When planning to go to a Nobel function in Stockholm, she noted that all the invited men were encouraged to rent, from a Swedish company, the traditional white tie and tails, while she had to buy a gown.  However, not to be outdone, she arranged to rent a magnificent fur coat and was the cynosure of all eyes.

My Great Great Great Aunt Frances Fox and her husband (a chemist) developed a shampoo that sold like crazy all over the U.S.  It resulted in salons and many other products.  She employed mostly women and they were trained in doing scalp treatments and massages in the early 20th century.  There were many intelligent Irish immigrant women that were very discriminated against and relegated to being maids and paid very little, so she hired and trained them.

Gosh this make me want to invent something :-)

Did you know that the original idea and patent that led to cellular phone technology comes from the movie star, Hedy Lamarr? She knew a great deal about weaponry by listening to her first husband, Fritz Mandl, an armament manufacturer. She left her husband when he became increasingly involved in deals with the Nazis and made her way to London, then on to Hollywood. She’d kept her mind active on what she’d heard about the problems of radio controlled missiles and how easy it was to block the simple signal. She realized that if the signal jumped from frequency to frequency quickly (like changing channels on a TV or radio) and both sender and receiver changed in the same order, then the signal could never be blocked by someone "listening in" who didn’t know how the frequency was changing. In those days before the transistor was invented it was difficult to design a way for this to be accomplished. Composer George Antheil suggested using something similar to piano rolls, from player pianos, to keep both sides in synch. Together, he and Lamarr patented the "Secret Communication System" in 1942. At that time the idea of using the paper rolls was too cumbersome to be practical. When the transistor did become available the Navy used the idea in secure military communications and when transistors became really cheap the idea was used in cellular phone technology. By the time the Navy used the idea, the original patent had expired and Lamarr and Antheil never received any royalty payments for their idea. In 1997 she was honored with an award at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference for "blazing new trails on the electronic frontier." Hedy Lamarr died on January 19, 2000. Source: The Associated Press, March, 1997

I have to give Hedy her ‘props’!