We apologize, but this video has failed to load.The heater? That’s credited to Margaret Wilcox of Chicago, before automobiles were even a common sight. Her design channeled the heat from a train locomotive and fed it into the passenger cars. She received a patent in 1893, her first under her own name — her prior inventions were under her husband’s name, since women couldn’t hold patents then.
Turn signals are credited to a Canadian woman, Florence Lawrence, who was one of the earliest silent-movie stars. She bought a car and in 1914 developed a mechanical arm, operated by a button inside the car, that flipped left or right to indicate a turn. She also made an arm that flipped up a “Stop” sign when she pushed the brake pedal, although she never filed patents for her inventions.
The rearview mirror is credited to two women. Dorothy Levitt was one of the first female race drivers in Britain, starting out racing boats in 1903; and then cars for London-based automaker Napier, and setting speed records for both. In 1909, she wrote a book for female motorists and suggested they carry a hand mirror to see what was behind them.Dorothée Pullinger took it a step further.
And GPS? Actress Hedy Lamarr disliked Hollywood parties and instead spent her spare time inventing things. During the Second World War, she came up with a system of radio transmitters and receivers that switched frequencies so the message couldn’t be intercepted. That eventually became the basis for modern communication systems and the foundation for global positioning. Then, in 1956, mathematician Gladys West became the second Black woman ever hired as a programmer by a naval base in Virginia.
It’s a clever video from Ford, and a fascinating way to highlight International Women’s Day. And we might add that while Henry Ford was the driving force behind his company, his wife Clara was beside him all the way, dripping gasoline into his engine in the kitchen sink as he worked to get it running.