Beulah Louise Henry was just nine years old when she came up with her first invention in 1896, a device that allowed a man to tip his hat without ever putting down his newspaper.
By her death in 1973, at the age of 85, she’d come up with so many more—a doll with eyes that changed color with the press of a button, a sewing machine without a bobbin (a threaded spool that slowed down work because it had to be frequently refilled), a clock designed to help kids learn to tell time, and others—that the press even dubbed Henry “Lady Edison.”
Her ideas, she once told a reporter, were “messages from a guiding spirit.”
Beulah Louise Henry’s early life
Henry grew up a daughter of fortune in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her father Walter was a prominent lawyer and orator. Her mother, who was also named Beulah—a common tradition in the late 19th century—was a homemaker and the daughter of the state’s former governor.
After high school, Henry went on to Elizabeth College, a short-lived, private Lutheran school for women in Charlotte. Henry hadn’t yet graduated when, in 1912, she received her first patent for a device she’d dreamed up while there: a vacuum ice cream maker designed to use both a motor and a hand crank (since electricity was still patchily distributed in those days), as well as minimal ice (which wasn’t widely available until the freezer came about a few decades later).
Female students at Elizabeth College gather to play a game of tennis in 1903. Image: Public Domain
Henry tried and failed to sell her “ice cream freezer” in Memphis, where her family had moved. But the city’s retailers and manufacturers had no interest in the apparatus.
That same stony resistance stymied Henry’s next attempt at commercial success, a parasol with a snap-on cover that could be changed to match a woman’s outfit. Sometime around 1920, the family agreed to relocate to New York where their daughter’s ingenuity might be better appreciated.
In Manhattan, Henry hoofed through the city’s streets and into its clattering manufacturers’ workshops day after day, trying to drum up interest in her interchangeable umbrella. But it was to no avail. They not only failed to see the invention’s potential, they told her the design was irreparably flawed, that it would be impossible to pierce the umbrella’s metal ribs with the snaps needed to hold the parasol cover in place.
How Henry’s tenacity led to her first commercial success
There were—and still remain today—both implicit and explicit biases against women inventors and some of the types of inventions they created, explains Kara Swanson, professor of law at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. While, unlike many women of her time, Henry had both the financial resources and at least some of the educational background required to develop her snap-on parasol, the technological advancement was one whose commercial viability the men that staffed patent and manufacturing offices struggled to envision.
Henry, however, “was obviously strongly motivated,” says Swanson. After multiple rejections to build the parasol prototype she needed to sell her invention commercially, she eventually gave up and made it herself. By the mid-1920s, Henry had managed to secure the necessary patents and successfully licensed her umbrella for sale. Displayed in the windows of the department store Lord & Taylor, it sold like hot cakes.
How Beulah Louise Henry transformed into “Lady Edison”
Henry didn’t have to live out of hotels but like many upper-middle-class New Yorkers in the 1920s and ‘30s, she chose to for the sake of convenience. The mid-priced stays in Midtown gave Henry, a woman always brimming with new ideas, easy access to the patent attorneys, model makers, and retailers her entrepreneurship required.
Despite never marrying or having children, Henry could see the potential the market in children’s toys held. Her next inventions captured the kiddie entertainment zeitgeist of the early-20th-century, including a realistic doll with a built-in radio, a water floaty anchored by inflatable swans, and a variety of different ways of sealing and covering air-filled balls.
In January 1925, Henry debuted her “Radio Rose” doll. The doll had a loud speaking unit in her bisque skull, the bell of an eight inch horn in her chest, and a complete self-contained three tube radio set in her dress. The radio doll made its first broadcast at the Gimbel Brothers Department store in-house 500W radio station, WGBS. Image: Underwood Archives / Contributor / Getty Images Underwood Archives
These toys, along with a variety of devices used primarily by women—a special attachment that allowed typists to create a duplicate of a document without getting their hands dirty, an industrial sewing machine that made two parallel rows of stitching for stronger and more durable seams, and others—were Henry’s specialty. As advances geared towards women and children, it may have been harder for Henry to secure patents than it would have been for inventions geared towards men. Once they made it into stores, however, commercial success was almost a given.
“Think about who was doing the daily shopping,” says Swanson. “Women were in the department stores, clothing stores, notion stores (shops specializing in sewing accessories), grocery stores.”
Even more expensive items like dishwashers and washing machines that most early-20th century women would not have been able to buy without the assistance of a husband or father, were still advertised to them. “Manufacturers understood that women were very involved in purchase decisions,” she says.
Henry, herself, was the model of a new kind of independent woman. She worked late and danced later, her hair fashioned into a stylish bob. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, even during the Great Depression, the inventor and her team at the Henry Umbrella and Parasol Company and, later, the B.L. Henry Company, turned out an average of more than two patents a year.
“I invent because I cannot help myself,” Henry once said. Astonished by her prolific output, reporters drew the parallel between her and the New Jersey inventor of electricity. The moniker “Lady Edison” stuck with her for the rest of her life.
Henry’s eccentric lifestyle and invention empire
By the 1940s, the now middle-aged Henry was a public figure. She was considered proper and respected—if not somewhat eccentric. The suite of rooms she rented at the Hotel Seville on 29th and Madison Avenue was known to smell of incense and have a revolving door through which numerous pet birds, turtles, and a cat named Chickadee passed. She stationed a telescope by the window to gaze at the night sky.
After World War II, during which Henry joined the effort working at a machine shop, she returned to the inventing game with a slew of new ideas: Milka-Moo, a plush toy cow that spurted milk; a toy dog that consumed real food; an inflatable interior compartment that made dolls lighter weight and easier to clean; a device that continuously basted a roast with juice.
Beulah Louise Henry poses with her latest invention, a doll with an inflatable interior compartment that could be easily bathed. Image: Public Domain
Henry was granted her final patent, the 49th, for a new type of “direct and return” envelope in 1970. She’s believed to have come up with more than twice that many inventions over the span of her life, half of which never made it to the patent stage. Still, says Swisher, “it was rare for any inventor to [acquire so many patents],” regardless of their gender.
It was another 36 years before Beulah Louise Henry finally shed her reputation as the female version of Thomas Edison. In 2006, she was recognized for her own brilliant mind by the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.
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