For who ever heard of a girl child who declined dolls in favor of taking the clock to pieces?

This sentence was written in an 1924 article in the “The News and Observer” from Raleigh, North Carolina. Beulah Loise Henry was born in 1887 just there. 

Already at 6 years, she started to “see” how you could improve products, the first case being the neighbourhood post office’s flag pole. She thought of a way that the flag could be lowered without it touching the ground.

Her parents, especially her father the lawyer Walter Henry, were really supportive of their daughter and her ideas. This was by far not the norm and Beulah was blessed in that sense. Education wise her possibilities were limited though. She went to a woman’s College, but got no further education. Instead she started inventing new products. She got her first patent in 1912.

The US Patent and Trademark Office writes as follows: “The device, an ice-cream maker, could work with minimal use of ice, a commodity in short supply in this era before freezers. Operated either by hand or by motor, depending on the availability of electricity (then still a novelty), the apparatus doubled as a water cooler. This first patent reflected all the hallmarks of a Beulah Louise Henry invention: versatility, efficiency, economy, and ease of use—qualities that would make her prototypes stand out to manufacturers and retailers in the next several decades.”

So, if you think that ideas on efficient cooling are new, Beulah will prove you wrong. But she had to prove the men dominated world of her time wrong, too.

After moving to New York, she tried to prototype her second invention: An umbrella with an exchangeable top. With Beulah’s improvement you could match the umbrella to your fashion and replace the cover in case it is ripped while reusing the main part. But at first the modelmakers refused to work with her as a woman and claimed her idea was unworkable. Only after she created the first prototype herself, she earned their respect and they had to admit that maybe it was workable after all.

Since the times were changing in respect of women’s rights (especially in big Cities like New York), Beulah lived a live as a “New Woman”. She was independent and self-sufficient, no husband told her what she could or couldn’t do. And as a fashionable person she was also good in self-marketing. She gave a lot of interviews and the press loved her. They called her “Lady Edison” and were intrigued about the fact that a talented woman inventor can be very feminine at the same time. That was a contradiction to their prejudices.

Beulah died in 1973 and was granted 49 patents through her lifetime. She shows us that we should follow our talents and help others to do that as well. If we overcome our prejudices, together we can create a world more versatile and sustainable, just like “Lady Edison” did.