Seeds of change
Blanche Ames, Eunice Foote, Lyda Newman, and Nellie Bly all held patents for new and novel technologies in their fields of work and study. They also used their talent to fight for the right to vote. Stories of inventors who advocated for voting rights show the interconnected nature of civic participation and innovation, a connection embraced by the women’s suffrage movement. As we celebrate America’s 250th year, join us as we explore just one of the ways inventors helped expand upon the ideals outlined in the Declaration of Independence.
Each month, our Journeys of Innovation series tells the stories of inventors or entrepreneurs who have made a positive difference in the world. This month’s story focuses on four inventors who were involved in the women’s suffrage movement.
Do you know an innovator or entrepreneur with an interesting story?
“The Map Blossoms” appeared in a May 1915 issue of the Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News, and was one of numerous political cartoons drawn by Ames.
(Courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University)
The year was 1915, and the women’s suffrage movement was gaining ground.
While national organizations lobbied Congress, voting rights advocates took to the streets in parades and demonstrations across the country. Individual states, many in the American West, passed legislation granting women the right to vote. Others, such as Massachusetts, planned statewide referendums on the issue for election time come November.
Blanche Ames picked up a pen.
A 37-year-old artist from Massachusetts best known for her drawings of botanicals, Ames now used her talents for a different goal: the right to have her voice heard at the ballot box.
At the base of one of her drawings, Ames sketched a planting pot and labeled it “equality.” The soil she proclaimed to be “liberty,” and from these foundational principles grew a tree. Representing the United States, the tree’s canopy imagery reflects three realities at the time: blossoms revealed which states had granted women the right to vote; states left blank had women’s suffrage on the ballot; and states where progress was slow were shaded darker.
Tending to the tree was the familiar figure of Uncle Sam. The patriotic symbol used his tools of justice, truth, education, and logic to prune away anti-suffragist sentiment, represented by a caterpillar threatening future blooms.
This political cartoon is one example of many that helped clear the path for the passage of the 19th Amendment five years later.
Ames would go on to not only be a leader of the women’s rights movement, but an inventor with three patents to her name. Her story serves as an example of how technological innovation and civic participation intertwined, not only with her cohort of suffragists but also those who came generations prior.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...”
The seeds of the suffrage movement were planted in Seneca Falls.
In 1848, around 300 women and men assembled along the banks of New York’s Seneca River for the first women’s rights convention held in the United States. From that convening came the Declaration of Sentiments, a resolution that cleverly echoed the Declaration of Independence while outlining the objectives of the emerging women’s rights movement, with the right to vote as a top priority.
The fifth signatory of the declaration was inventor and scientist Eunice Foote.
Eunice Foote received a formal and rigorous education in the sciences from the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York. (Courtesy of Carlyn Iverson, NOAA)
Eunice Foote held patents for non-squeaking shoes and a paper making machine. She was also the first scientist to explain the greenhouse effect. Her experiments in the 1850s demonstrated the thermal effects of carbon-dioxide-rich air when exposed to sunlight.
Although Foote published her experiments and findings, she was not properly credited with this discovery. A male colleague had to present her paper at the 1856 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the society omitted her findings in their annual report. Foote shifted her focus to invention, receiving the two patents she held under her own name in 1860 and 1864.
With her background in thermodynamics, Foote likely contributed her expertise to another patent for an automatic draft regulator for stoves, which was granted to her husband Elisha in 1842. Elisha, who later served as Commissioner of Patents, was also one of 32 men who signed the Declaration of Sentiments.
Eunice Foote challenged expectations for women in science at the time, and she had a hand in shaping the suffrage movement from its foundations.
“In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object.”
Within towns and cities across the nation, the roots of the suffrage movement grew deep thanks to community organizers like Lyda Newman.
A hair care specialist living in the Manhattan neighborhood of San Juan Hill, Newman made a name for herself with her innovative products. Newman registered a trademark for her brand of hair and scalp treatment, Vidacabello, in 1894. Newspaper articles suggest she took her expertise on the road, offering her services to customers in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as New York City.
Four years later she received a patent for a hairbrush, reflecting the needs of a hairdresser in the nation’s largest city. With fine synthetic bristles, the brush housed an inner chamber that trapped dust and dirt, constant problems for New Yorkers of the late 19th century. Newman’s work paved the way for other Black innovators to further revolutionize the haircare industry.
Although no verified image of Lyda Newman has been uncovered, her trademark and patent documents, as well as newspaper accounts of her work, serve as a record of her contributions to her field and her community.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration)
Newman’s innovative mind blazed a trail for others to follow in politics as well. In the 1910s, she led efforts by the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP) to involve Black women in the struggle for the vote. Having built a grassroots suffrage campaign in her Manhattan neighborhood of San Juan Hill, she was approached to lead the effort for women’s suffrage among Black New Yorkers in 1915. The New York Times and other papers took notice of some of Newman’s strategies, including closing a street in San Juan Hill for children to play safely while their mothers visited suffragist headquarters.
Lyda Newman registered to vote on May 25, 1918, just months after a referendum on women’s suffrage passed in New York state.
“We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf.”
Nellie Bly, circa 1890
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
With the help of journalists like Nellie Bly, the branches of the suffragist movement reached around the world.
Investigative journalist Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known by her pseudonym Nellie Bly, held two U.S. patents in manufacturing. Following her expose on brutality and neglect in late nineteenth-century mental health asylums and her record-breaking 72-day trip around the world, Bly had a second career as an industrialist.
With her husband’s health failing, Bly took over as the head of Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. around the turn of the 20th century. During this time, Bly invented and patented a novel milk can and a stacking garbage can.
Although the company’s financial struggles led to its eventual bankruptcy, Iron Clad’s lasting legacy can be seen in the 55-gallon oil drum still used widely today, modeled on a popular steel barrel manufactured during Bly’s tenure.
Bly eventually returned to journalism. She covered both a Washington, D.C. convening of suffragists in 1896 and the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Procession, the first suffrage parade in Washington, D.C.
Despite the excitement surrounding the event, Bly correctly predicted in her article that it would be 1920 before women were able to vote in national elections.
“We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.”
By the time Blanche Ames penned her political cartoons, the suffrage movement was in full bloom.
The passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 did not end Ames’ involvement in women’s rights. She was a leader in a number of initiatives surrounding women’s health, including access to birth control.
Ames also went on to have further success as an artist and an inventor. Ames and her brother developed an extensive color notation system that allowed artists to map out the most realistic colors for their paintings. The Ames siblings received a patent for this system of color standards in 1927. As the nation entered World War II, Ames set her mind to supporting the war effort with a patent for a propeller snare intended to inhibit enemy planes. Her final invention was for an environmentally friendly anti-pollution sewage system patented in 1970, fifty years after the 19th amendment was ratified.
Blanche Ames used Borderland, her estate in North Easton, Massachusetts, as a base for her artistic, political, and inventive endeavors.
(Courtesy of Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College)
Eunice Foote, Lyda Newman, Nellie Bly, and Blanche Ames lived in different eras, different regions of the country, and received patents in four vastly different fields. What tied them together was a commitment to using their talents to improve not only their work, but to ensure others had the opportunity to fully participate in society.
As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, stories like these illustrate how inventors contributed to growing the ideals set out in the nation’s founding document. From the roots of the suffrage movement in Seneca Falls to the final years prior to the passage of the 19th Amendment, suffragist inventors used their time and their talents to put the belief that all men and women were equal into practice.
Credits
Produced by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Communications Officer. For feedback or questions, please contact inventorstories@uspto.gov.
Story by Rebekah Oakes. Graphic on the USPTO.gov homepage and at the beginning of the story is by Gabriella McNevin-Melendez.
References
“19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote (1920)” National Archives. Accessed March 2026. 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920) | National Archives
“Activity of the Woman Suffrage Party.” Twin City Star. September 18, 1915.
Ames Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Barber, E. Susan. “Women’s Suffrage History Timeline.” Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Accessed March 2026. Woman's Suffrage History Timeline - Women's Rights National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
“Blanche Ames.” Lemelson-MIT. Accessed March 2026. Blanche Ames | Lemelson
Bly, Nellie. “Nellie Bly with the Female Suffragists.” The New York World. January 26, 1896.
Brazil, Rachel. “Eunice Foote: the mother of climate change.” Chemistry World. April 20, 2020.
Declaration of Sentiments. Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Accessed March 2026. Declaration of Sentiments - Women's Rights National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
Huddleson, Amanda. “Happy 200th birthday to Eunice Foote, hidden climate science pioneer.” NOAA. Accessed March 2026. Happy 200th birthday to Eunice Foote, hidden climate science pioneer | NOAA Climate.gov
Kurland, Zoe et al. “The Woman Who Demonstrated the Greenhouse Effect.” Scientific American, November 2023.
Lange, Allison. “Seeing Citizens: Picturing American Women’s Fight for the Vote.” The Long 19th Amendment Project Portal, President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2020.
“Lyda D. Newman of New York.” Newport Daily News. July 17, 1903.
“Lyda Newman.” Lemelson-MIT. Accessed March 2026. Lyda Newman | Lemelson
“The Map Blossoms.” Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News. May 22, 1915.
“Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913.” Library of Congress Research Guides. Accessed March 2026. Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 - American Women: Topical Essays - Research Guides at Library of Congress
“Negro Suffrage Headquarters.” The New York Times, September 2, 1915.
“Suffrage Centre for Negroes.” The New York Times, August 29, 1915.
Wells, B.A. and K.L. Wells. “Remarkable Nellie Bly’s Oil Drum.” American Oil & Gas Historical Society. Accessed March 2026. Remarkable Nellie Bly's Oil Drum - American Oil & Gas Historical Society
“Women’s Vote Grows in State.” Springfield Evening Union, December 30, 1914.
