The Retrieval of a Legacy: Nineteenth-Century American Women Inventors (review)

The Retrieval of a Legacy: Nineteenth-Century American Women Inventors. By Denise E. Pilato. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. Pp. xvii+200. $69.95.

Denise Pilato's objective is to revise the "malecentrism" of histories of technology. This is an important topic, which deserves a systematic and nuanced examination. Pilato draws heavily on research by others working in this area, notably Anne Macdonald and Autumn Stanley. She argues that the experience of women inventors provides a "contextual fabric" that "exemplified cultural barriers and patterns of gendered identity in relationship to technological creativity," and that by "avoiding the cultural construct of male activity and female passivity, we begin to see that the ideological construct of masculine and feminine identity did not in reality negate one from the other in terms of technological creativity" (p. xii). In other words, nineteenth-century women who wished to compete in the marketplace for inventions encountered obstacles.

Pilato outlines her conclusions regarding these obstacles. The first chapter, which ostensibly deals with the patent system, also indicts the gender biases of American democracy and the U.S. Constitution, the legal system in general, and property-rights laws affecting married women in particular. Examples of innovations in the hat industry illustrate that, while some women obtained property rights in their inventions, many did not pursue patents because of cultural notions such as the appropriate sexual division of labor. Moreover, "the brilliant potentiality of women as inventors" was suppressed by social custom (p. 48). The chapter on Jacksonian democracy extols the achievements of a number of women inventors and repeats unsubstantiated anecdotes suggesting that some male inventors unfairly garnered the credit due women. We are told that "[President] Jackson undermined the significance of women inventors," and that during this period "it was a national endeavor to submerge women inventors in the opaque guise of democratic rhetoric as antitechnocratic" (p. 72).

Pilato correctly points out that the 1860s were a turning point in the experience of women inventors. Women in general likely benefited from opportunities to enter occupations beyond the domestic sphere, as well as from legal changes and educational advancement. It is curious that the chapter on the Civil War era does not refer to Lisa Marovich's fine systematic research on the relationship between wars and women's inventive activity. Instead, the exposition centers on the often-cited stories of such inventors as Martha Coston, Mary J. Montgomery, and Clarissa Britain. The decades after the Civil War are highlighted because they witnessed the rise of the women's movement, the admission of more women to higher education, networking, and membership in social clubs and organization. What is less clear is the extent to which these events influenced inventive activity.

The final chapter discusses the insights to be gleaned from industrial fairs, including the 1876 Centennial Exposition, which "reflected a patriarchal struggle to maintain cultural control over women's relationship with technology, keeping it restricted to domestic technology" (p. 142). Pilato argues that the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 marked the advent of a new era for women inventors, one in which gendered misconceptions were attenuated and women's contributions were recognized. The sanguine conclusion is that women inventors of this period left a legacy that promoted progress in the twentieth century.

Judith McGaw has reminded us that the roster of important female technologists may be limited because we have inherited a limited vision of what constitutes important technology. Despite this caution, Pilato highlights the achievements of "heroines of invention" and attributes the rest--predominantly incremental inventions directed toward nonmechanical household products, kitchen tools, and apparel--to cultural constraints of the time. The argument does not explain why, if the rate and direction of women's inventive activity in the nineteenth century were primarily caused by gender biases and constraints specific to that period, women's inventions in the twenty-first century still exhibit similar patterns.

This book typifies the advantages and defects of...