- What?
- The computer was from a woman?
Did you know this?
Women are so cool.
Hey, what's up y'all?
So you know I love a lot of woman,
I even have a song about it, okay?
Get ready to be inspired and maybe learn something new
because these next few minutes are going
to be completely dedicated to one of my favorite F-words.
Females.
Get your mind out of the gutter.
It's Women's History Month,
a time to celebrate trailblazing women throughout history,
like Harriet Tubman, Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks,
RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Michelle Obama.
They're all so inspiring.
There's so many women,
but today we're going to look at some incredible women
who you may not know,
but you do know what these women have done.
So let's meet some women who changed the world
with their inventions.
Here we go.
(upbeat music)
I'm actually excited,
but I don't know some of these things
that are probably gonna come up.
So I am on the ride with you.
Drum roll please.
(trills tongue)
Oh, thank you.
Oh, what did I do?
What was I doing?
Was I making a fire, like what?
(phone rings)
Caller ID?
Of course a woman made up Caller ID.
She was like, I'm screening these calls.
I don't wanna talk to him.
You can thank Shirley for that,
'cause Shirley Ann Jackson is a modern day female inventor
who was the first black woman to graduate
with her PhD from MIT in 1973.
That's amazing.
She completed research that has since led to such creations
as the portable fax machine, touch tone telephones,
solar cells, and yep, Caller ID,
which we love.
(upbeat music)
(drum roll)
Windshield wipers, seriously?
In 1903, entrepreneur Mary Anderson saw that tram drivers,
that's how people got around before cars were mainstream,
tram drivers.
Tram drivers would lean out of the tram
in order to wipe the windshield in the rain and snow.
Oh my gosh.
So Mary patented the first-ever design
for the windshield wiper with a rubber blade
and spring arm that would wipe the windshield itself.
Way to go.
Cadillac was the first car manufacturer to adopt them
as standard equipment in 1922.
However, Anderson never profited from her invention
because her patent ran out in 1920.
I have so many comments right now,
but I'm gonna keep 'em to myself.
I'm very mad about that.
That is so not fair.
At least her family should get the residuals.
Okay.
That's my reaction to that.
So every time I flick on my wipers from now on,
I will say thank you, Mary Anderson.
(techno music)
What?
The computer was from a woman.
Did you know this?
When you think about modern computers,
you probably think Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Yeah?
But really it was Grace Hopper along with Howard Aiken,
who designed Harvard's Mark One computer in 1944,
which filled an entire room,
I did know it was huge,
and weighed five tons.
I did know it was huge,
but the first ever computer,
a woman was a part of that?
I didn't know that.
That's really rad.
Hopper invented the compiler
that translated written language
into computer code and coined the term bug and debugging
when she literally had to remove moths from the device.
Oh my gosh.
Grace Hopper, first computer.
Thank you, Grace Hopper.
And once again, Mary Anderson,
because you never got credit for it,
and I'm pretty upset about that whole thing still.
We didn't have like a computer 'cause we were poor,
but my mom did get a word processor,
if you remember what that was?
And I thought it was the coolest thing,
and I'd pretend to sit at it
like I was writing my report for college.
Like I would, I, yeah,
I was a nerd and still am.
And remember the Oregon Trail?
Everyone died of dysentery.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's a fun game.
Real uplifter family event,
you all died of dysentery.
(triumphant trumpet music)
The dishwasher.
Well, you know why woman made that up?
She was done.
Yeah.
In 1872, Josephine Cochran
had what we would describe as a basic problem.
Her dishes would often get broken
by whomever was washing them.
That's what you're trying to get your kids
to do some work in your house,
and that didn't happen.
So with the help of an engineer,
she designed the first-ever hands-free dishwasher,
which would use pressurized jets
of soapy water to do the cleaning.
Genius.
That is amazing,
and I'm very thankful Josephine,
'cause that is a time saver.
I was like,
but you know what?
You gotta still clean the food off,
or it's just gonna be in there.
That's so gross.
Like just clean it off and put in the dishwasher disposal.
Like not dishwasher, dish.
I can't talk.
Just clean it off and put it in the disposal.
Nope. Dispose...
(woman laughs)
This next female invention could cause a controversy.
Beer.
(dramatic music)
Beer?
Listen up beer lovers.
Next time you chug your favorite brew,
you might wanna cheers the women around you.
Because why?
Historians say the oldest evidence of beer making
is seen roughly 7,000 years ago?
Well they even needed escapism then, didn't they?
And it was female Sumerians
who first discovered the process.
That's so cool.
They even have a goddess of beer,
known as Ninkasi?
Cheers to that.
(triumphant trumpet music)
Wireless transmission technology.
Okay wait, you may know Hedy Lamar as a black and white,
oh I, oh, I knew this one.
I didn't remember that I knew it,
so maybe I didn't know it.
As a black and white Hollywood movie star
in the thirties, forties, fifties
known for playing Delilah
in Cecil B. DeMille's Sampson and Delilah.
Hedy Lamar right there.
You know how I knew this?
I feel like I saw this in an episode of Timeless.
I feel like that's how I knew this,
was from a TV show.
But did y'all know that during World War II,
this movie star also worked to improve torpedo technology.
So as a gifted mathematician and engineer,
she worked with a music composer
to develop frequency hopping,
which would encrypt torpedo control signals
so the enemy couldn't send them off course.
But even more impressive,
if that's not impressive enough,
the type of technology she developed
ended up being the foundation
for many modern day inventions,
including wifi and GPS.
That's so cool.
Hope she got paid.
Yeah, exactly.
Mary Anderson didn't.
Remember her.
Mary Anderson, windshield wipers.
(upbeat music)
Bulletproof fiber for like bulletproof vests?
Women are so cool.
Wow.
In 1965, Stephanie, am I gonna say this right?
Kwolek?
- [Crew Member] Mm-hmm.
An American chemist was trying
to create a new lightweight material for car tires,
'cause she's already rad trying to do that,
when she accidentally invented a brand new material,
Kevlar.
What?
The new material was lightweight,
five times stronger than steel,
and was eventually used to create bulletproof vests.
That is so cool.
It's now also used in boats, airplanes,
and in total about 200 applications.
Go, Stephanie.
I did not know that women invented those things.
I hope you learned something
that you loved here today as well.
All right, well happy Women's History Month everybody.
Let's continue to change the world as we do.
Bye.