Necessity is the mother of invention

Neatorama wrote an excerpt of The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, as part of Neatorama’s review (and giveaway contest) for the book:

Even though it’s said that "necessity is the mother of invention," women’s contribution to inventing and science have been, in the past, often overlooked. It’s likely women have been using their creativity and intelligence to engineer new ideas and products since the beginning of human experience, but nobody really kept track of such things until a few years ago. Below we’ve assembled some of our favorite daring women inventors, scientists, and doctors - from Nobel Prize winners to crafters of practical devices, from women who revolutionized the way diapers were changed to women whose revolutionary ideas changed the world.

For example in 1870 Martha Knight patents a machine to produce flat-bottomed paper bags. She also becomes the first woman in the United States to fight and win a patent suit, when she defended her patent against a man who had stolen her design and filed for his own patent on it. He claimed a woman couldn’t possibly have the mechanical knowledge needed to invent such a complex machine, but Knight was able to back up her claim. After her success, she went on to develop and patent several other machines, including rotary machines and automatic tools.