She Beat Rumpelstiltskin to the Patent Office!
Two hundred years ago tomorrow, fifty-seven-year-old Connecticut woman Mary Dixon Kies obtained a patent on her method of weaving straw with silk. Kies had hoped to parlay her invention into success in the American hat industry, but hat enthusiasts never took to the fabric, and she never made money off her innovation. [Cliche alert! Dead ahead.] Nonetheless, it is quite a “feather in her cap” that she was the first female patentholder in the U.S.
Carved into her tombstone is a rather unusual epitaph: “She obtained in May 1809 the first patent ever issued to a woman.”
Rarely does IP law make its way onto a gravestone carving! They could have at least rhymed. “Here lies Mary Kies. Sold no hats, but she sure tried”? “Mary Kies held a patent, tried to profit but got flattened”? Okay, reaching on that last one, but Steve Miller would be okay with it.
In any event, Happy Anniversary, Mary Dixon Kies! You paved the way for female inventors everywhere, and we’re indebted to you.