Women Inventors

Can you identify these six women inventors, their inventions, or both?

1. Peace Corps volunteer Ann Moore spent her time with the natives of Togo in West Africa. After she had her first child in the United States, she wished she had a device like the baby carriers she'd seen the African tribes use. Eventually, she made a pouch from straps and an old sheet. This fabric harness caught on and became a business for her and her husband. In 1977, she patented the S _ _ _ _ _, a hands-free holder that snuggles a baby. Its name?

2. This mother's helper invented "level-spoon measurements," leading to the recipe as we know it today. Until the 1880s, cooking instructions called for a "pinchful" or a "dab." It was her "Boston Cooking School Cook Book" that made a "handful" a cupful and set a standard for food preparation nationwide. Who was she?

3. In her Chelsea, England, shop, she and her husband would sew the next day's clothes at night in the front parlor. Her knee-revealing skirt launched the "Carnaby Street look" in the 1960s and gave a boost to the English economy. She was presented with the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to trade. Her name and her short, short skirt?

4. To correct her typing mistakes, Bette Nesmith Graham, an enterprising secretary, used white paint to cover up her mistakes. The typing pool caught on, and the demand for her solution increased dramatically. Her first hand-painted label read: "Mistake Out." Using her home as a lab and bottling factory, she perfected this coverup, quick-drying fluid. In 1968, her L _ _ _ _ _ P _ _ _ _ company produced more than 10,000 bottles a day. The fluid's name?

5. As a teenager, this author-illustrator spent time in the woods observing lichen. After numerous drawings, she soon determined that the "plant" was actually a symbiosis of two life forms - algae and fungi. She achieved some success when her discovery was finally presented to the scientific community. Even so, she did not see a life for herself in science. Instead, she went on to write her classic bunny story along with colorful watercolor drawings. Who was she?

6. Restaurant owner Ruth Wakefield invented this cookie by accident in the1930s. At her Toll House Inn near Whitman, Mass., she hoped to save time cooking her basic butter-drop cookies. So she broke up a chocolate bar and mixed it into the batter instead of melting the chocolate first. To her surprise, the chocolate chunks stayed firm. Her shortcut has pleased cookie lovers for 65 years. At first, it was called a "chocolate crispie." What is this breakthrough cookie called today?

ANSWERS

(1) The Snugli, by Snugli Inc.; (2) Fannie Merritt Farmer (1857-1914); (3) Mary Quant and her miniskirt; (4) Liquid Paper by The Liquid Paper Co.; (5) Beatrix Potter (1866-1943); (6) the chocolate-chip cookie.