N. Raghuraman Column | Problem facing Karen, Mahila Avishkarak Solution

N. Raghuraman, Management Guru

I don’t know about others, but my family recently faced a problem on the domestic front. The people working in our house went to the village. This is a tradition every year, but it is easy to find someone to work in their place. But this time no one was found. The reason for this was said to be state elections and wedding season. Then my wife turned to the Roomba – a sweeping robotic vacuum cleaner.

Inspired by his work I searched who made it. She was 58 year old Helen Grainer. Greiner’s interest in robotics began when she watched the movie ‘Star Wars’ at the age of 10 and became inspired by its character R2-D2. A graduate in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Helen co-created the famous Roomba. It was launched in 2002 and became the first highly successful commercial household robot.

Today Roomba sits in our room and waits for our command to start working. He has memorized the map of the entire house – even the ‘no-go zones’ where he is not allowed to go. In a typical two-bedroom house, it can sweep and mop without any supervision in less than 45 minutes just on voice commands.

Women have been expected to not only take care of food and clothing for the family, but also do physical labor including keeping the house clean. There were many tasks which required hours of hard work every day and made domestic life monotonous. That is why many women were inspired to create inventions that could save their time.

The most back breaking task is washing dishes. Although dishwashing machines already existed, Josephine Cochrane’s husband died in 1883 and she fell into debt. The existing dishwashing machines used brushes and scrubbers, which did not clean properly and also caused damage to the crockery.

This machine also gave the same results as his servant. Then she said, ‘If no one else will make a dishwashing machine, I will make it myself.’ He designed a machine that used motorized wheels and hot-water pressure to wash utensils stored in metal racks. He received a patent for his invention in December 1886, and this discovery became the basis for the standard design of modern dishwashers.

You will be surprised to know that the refrigerator, the most common companion in the kitchen of almost every house, is also the contribution of women. Earlier, most people used to use ice boxes, which had the problem of constantly removing melt water. Women had to plan how to cook and store food to prevent it from spoiling.

In fact, the electric refrigerator that you and I use today was patented in 1914 by a female stenographer, Florence Parpart. She was not the first woman to do so. Fred W. Wolf patented the electric refrigerator in 1913, in which the electric refrigerator was placed on top of the ice box. But Florence completely mechanized it and installed a front opening cabinet, which made it much easier for them to keep and take out food.

Interestingly, when women were not granted patents, Thomas Masters of Pennsylvania patented the corn processing machine, which was invented by his wife Sibylla Masters. Until 1715, grinding corn into flour by hand was a time-consuming and difficult task.

That’s why Sibilla was inspired to make such a machine. There are hundreds of things which women have contributed in mechanizing. Whether it’s Margaret E. Knight’s flat bottom paper bag machine, Sarah Boone’s improved ironing board or Marion O’Brien Donovan’s waterproof diaper cover.

The bottom line is that Tackle the problem head on, who knows you may be the next inventor.

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