TikTok is a funny and interesting place. Between people doing trendy dances and people sharing the reasons why they don’t wipe their butts, content creators truly cover a wide range of topics.
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One of these topics is history. Actually, education overall. Many content creators make History easily accessible and fun. In a skit-like video, French content creator @melissa.amneris decided to highlight what life would be like without the inventions of women.
Your routine would be very different
The video starts like a normal day would: with morning coffee. Except that in a world where we live without women’s inventions, making coffee would be difficult. Indeed, the inventor of the paper coffee filter was a woman named Melitta Bentz. Her invention dates back to 1908.
In a world where we don’t use women’s inventions, most of our food would turn bad. Indeed, the electrical refrigerator was invented by Florence Parpart. Her patent was granted in 1914.
Keeping things cold was not the only thing that women inventors had in mind. In 1917, Ida Forbes created the first ever electric water heater. You can thank her for your hot showers before and/or after work.
But even before taking a shower, something we all do now as we wake up is look at our phones. But you wouldn’t have a phone or a computer if it wasn’t for Ada Lovelace who went above and beyond for a translating job. In 1842, she was asked to translate an article on Babbage’s Analytical Engine. This engine, which has all of the ‘essential elements of a modern computer’ was never actually built but it gifted the world with something even better: Ada Lovelace’s notes.
Lovelace understood the machine so well that Babbage asked her to expand on her translation and on the article. Her work includes what is considered the first ever ‘computer programs.’
Without Dorothy Levitt you wouldn’t have an rear-view mirror in your car. Without Elizabeth J. Feinler there would be no Internet. Without Alice Guy, you wouldn’t have fiction films. Without Roberta Williams, who worked with her husband, there would be no video games.
The list could go on.
Why are these inventors not known?
The issues of women inventors not being as broadly known as men inventors belongs to a bigger issue: the erasure of women in History.
This wider issue impacts how known these inventors are as they did one thing that history doesn’t like women to do. They stepped out of the role that they were assigned to. Indeed, these women thought outside the box and if you look, they invented objects that were directly useful to them, in the home.
Of course not all of them were thinking of things that would only be helpful to housewives so why are they still unknown? In 2016, Anita Sarkeesian and Laura Hudson wrote in Times Magazine:
when we (women) do achieve great things despite the odds, our accomplishments are often diminished, ignored or credited to men.
In recent year, many historians (mostly women) have worked tirelessly to reintroduce women into history books. This is hard work as they can’t rely on records. The reason for that is simple, Sarkeesian and Hudson explain:
the story of history is a story written by people with their own perspectives and biases, and one that has often ignored, erased or undervalued women.
The solution for things to be better is to ‘change focus’ and this is what some content creators are doing. They are providing easily accessible content that sheds a light on not well known historical facts. A content creator is not bound by academia and can tell the History they want to.
Read more:
⋙ Did the US or the UK invent crisps? Here's the curious story behind their creation
⋙ Here's why the UK celebrates Black History Month in October
Sources:
Time Magazine: We Must Rewrite Women's Role in History
