In 1868 Knight was working at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, Massachusetts, when she invented a wooden hand-cranked machine that could cut, fold, and glue a flat-bottomed bag. The result was a stronger and more stable paper bag than any that had come before it. This time, Knight wanted due credit, so she went against social norms and decided to apply for a patent. But first she needed an iron prototype, so she went to a machine shop in Boston to have one built.
Matilda Effect: When Knight applied for the patent, she was dismayed to learn that one had recently been granted to a rival inventor named Charles Annan for the exact same machine. Though Knight had seen Annan tinkering around at the machine shop, little did she know that he was spying on her and stealing her work. Despite her insistence that she invented the paper bag, no one at the patent office believed her, leaving her no other choice but to sue.
At the trial, Annan’s lawyer argued that no uneducated woman could come up with such a contraption. But Knight had the facts on her side—and she had a lot of evidence. She produced all of her notes, explained her invention in detail, and called three witnesses who testified that she was indeed the inventor…and she won the suit. Result: In 1871 Knight became one of the first women ever to be granted a patent. And her flat-bottomed paper bag made an immediate impact on society (much in the way sliced bread would in 1928). England’s Queen Victoria even presented Knight with the Decoration of the Royal Legion of Honour. Knight received at least 27 more patents in her life, including a numbering machine and improvements to the rotary engine. But the “Lady Edison,” as some called her, had wanted to do much more: “I’m only sorry I couldn’t have had as good a chance as a boy.”
“Popsicle” is a registered trademark. Each Popsicle is made from a patented formula that’s kept secret.
JOCELYN BELL (1943–)
Accomplishment: In the late 1960s, Bell was a postgraduate student at the University of Cambridge working on her Ph.D. in astrophysics when she detected and identified the first radio pulsars. The discovery proved for the first time that when a massive star went supernova, it didn’t just blow up into nothing, but became a much smaller rotating neutron star. That breakthrough gave astronomers a much clearer picture of how the universe works.
Matilda Effect: Bell was working on the research project with two men—her thesis adviser, Antony Hewish, and the astronomer Martin Ryle. Bell’s contribution was so important that, on the paper announcing the discovery, her name was listed second, right under Hewish, the professor. In 1974 the research team was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics—well, not all of the team. The prize went to Hewish and Ryle only. Many scientists were upset by the snub. One of them was renowned astronomer Iosif Shklovsky, who told Bell, “You have made the greatest astronomical discovery of the 20th century.”
It’s not uncommon for the Nobel Prize Committee to favor men; only 16 women scientists have received the prize in the last 100 years. For her part, Bell was diplomatic: “I believe it would demean the Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them.” But most disagreed, arguing that it was her discovery, and she should have been a Nobel laureate. Bell didn’t let the slight slow her down: she’s since served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 2015 was awarded the Women of the Year Prudential Lifetime Achievement award. But still no Nobel Prize.
NETTIE STEVENS (1861–1912)
Accomplishment: In 1536 King Henry VIII had his wife, Anne Boleyn, executed after she failed to bear him a son. That’s a real example, albeit extreme, of the way women throughout history have been punished and scorned for not producing male children. In the early 1900s, geneticist Nettie Stevens discovered the tragic irony: it’s the male’s contribution—not the female’s—that determines the gender of the child.
Stevens was one of many scientists who were trying to solve the gender determination mystery. Her breakthrough came while studying mealworms at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She discovered that sperm carries both the X and the Y chromosome, while eggs only carry the Y chromosome. Therefore, she concluded, it’s the male sperm that determines the offspring’s sex.
Olympic swimmers never drown. Even so, there were lifeguards at the 2016 Rio Olympics swimming events. (Brazilian law required it.)
Columbia University professor Edmund Beecher Wilson was conducting similar research, and he published his findings first—in 1900. But here’s the thing: he came to the wrong conclusion. After studying only male mealworms, he concluded that environment was the major factor in determining gender. Stevens had studied both male and female worms, and it was she who correctly concluded—in 1905—that the male XY chromosomes are responsible.
Matilda Effect: Stevens’s findings were mostly ignored. Not only was she a woman, but she was a woman stating that men had been wrong to blame women. One man who didn’t ignore Stevens’s findings was Wilson. After she published, he reassessed his work and came to the same conclusion she had. When he published a correction paper, he thanked Stevens for her contribution. Not that it made any difference. As science historian Stephen Brush writes: “Because of Wilson’s more substantial contributions in other areas, he tends to be given most of the credit for this discovery.” Sadly, Stevens’s life and career were cut short when she died of breast cancer at age 50.
CAMILLE CLAUDEL (1864–1943)
Accomplishment: Claudel was one of the most talented sculptors of her day, on a par with her mentor, Auguste Rodin, of The Thinker fame. In 1884 the 19-year-old Claudel started her art career as one of the 42-year-old Rodin’s assistants. From the beginning, he recognized her immense talent, and she quickly became an artist in her own right—at least to those who knew her.
Matilda Effect: Rodin took credit for a lot of work that was actually produced by Claudel, including The Slave and Laughing Man (she sculpted the heads). This wasn’t necessarily because Rodin was a spotlight hog—it was also because of the times. In those days women weren’t accepted as artists, and obtaining funding for expensive bronze sculptures was difficult. It was especially difficult for Claudel, whose themes were often overtly sexual. Rodin funded many of her pieces…and then signed his name to them to give them a wider audience. But he was the one who was celebrated for the work, not her.
It got even worse when they had a falling-out in the 1890s. The two had an intimate relationship. When Claudel demanded that Rodin leave his childhood sweetheart and marry her, he refused. Knowing that she could never have Rodin exclusively, or escape his shadow, she left him to make it on her own.
Rodin continued to fund Claudel’s work for a few more years…until she created The Age of Maturity, a bronze sculpture of a man walking away from a pleading woman. When Rodin saw the sculpture, he recognized the depiction of their relationship and was furious. He broke off all contact, and Claudel ended up begging for food in the streets. A few years later, her brother and mother had her committed to a mental institution, where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She stopped making art, destroyed most of her sculptures (only 90 remain), and blamed Rodin for stealing all the credit and destroying her life, once saying, “I am in no mood to be deceived any longer by the crafty devil and false character whose greatest pleasure is to take advantage of everyone.”
First U.S. theater that showed only movies: L.A.’s Electric Theater, housed in a circus tent (1902).
Claudel died in obscurity, at age 78. In 2017, on the 100th anniversary of Rodin’s death, the Camille Claudel Museum was opened in France, finally giving the artist the credit she deserved.
MILICENT PATRICK (1915–1998)
Accomplishments: Milicent Patrick was the Hollywood makeup artist who designed Gill-Man, the fishlike creature in 1954’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Prior to that, she’d designed the makeup for Mr. Hyde in Abbott and Costello Meet Jekyll and Hyde. She was also a model, an actor who appeared in more than 20 movies, a concert pianist, and the first female anim
ator to work for Walt Disney. To promote the film, Universal executives—no doubt wanting to capitalize on Patrick’s good looks—sent her and Gill-Man on a nationwide public relations tour called “The Beauty Who Created the Beast.”
Matilda Effect: Bud Westmore, the head of makeup at Universal, was miffed that anyone other than he would get credit for creating Gill-Man—especially a woman. And Westmore had clout. Accounts vary, but most insiders agree that it was Patrick who was primarily responsible for designing Gill-Man’s look. Nevertheless, Westmore sent a string of angry memos demanding that her name be removed from the film’s credits. He also made the studio change the tour name to “The Beauty Who Lives with the Beast.” Patrick was afraid she’d lose her job if she stood up for herself, so she made sure to always say that creating Gill-Man was a team effort, and Bud Westmore was the head of that team. The gesture did little to placate Westmore, and he fired Patrick when she got back to Hollywood.
Who knows what other contributions Millicent Patrick would have made to movie monsters had she remained at Universal? After she was fired, her career never really rebounded. She acted in a few more movies, but not much was heard from her after 1970. Today, there’s a building at Universal named after Bud Westmore, but not a single monument to the woman responsible for one of Hollywood’s most enduring and iconic monsters.
William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, wanted to name it Georgium Sidus—“George’s Star.” It took 69 years for people to finally agree to call it Uranus.
THE CENSORED 11
The classic Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons have been a part of TV forever. But there are a handful out of that collection that never aired on TV.
THAT’S ALL FOLKS
In the 1950s and early 1960s, individual TV stations that bought the rights to air old Warner Bros. cartoons had the right to decide which ones they would—and would not—air. Originally, the cartoons had been produced for adult audiences and were run before feature films—which is a lot different from airing them on television for kids. Some themes that were acceptable in the 1930s and 1940s simply would not fly in the era of the civil rights movement. Result: A lot of those old cartoons were edited to remove racially “sensitive” material, which usually meant removing blackface jokes. Other cartoons had so much objectionable material that many stations chose not to air them at all.
In 1968 United Artists secured the rights to the Warner Bros. cartoon catalog. UA created a new syndication deal with TV stations that wanted those old cartoons. But by this time, social values and cultural awareness had changed so much that United Artists didn’t give the stations a choice. The company decided that 11 cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s contained so much racist material—primarily main characters with a blackface appearance or stereotyped, exaggerated African American features—that to edit them would be to reduce them to nothing. Those 11 cartoons were excluded from the syndication package and essentially banned from distribution in the United States. Cartoon aficionados call these missing shorts “the Censored 11.” They haven’t aired on American television since 1968, and they’re available only as low-quality bootlegs.
“Uncle Tom’s Bungalow” (1937). Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped jumpstart the slavery abolition movement with its depiction of the difficult, unfair lives of slaves. As much good as it did, it’s also so simplistic that its characters informed African American stereotypes for years, particularly Uncle Tom, a kind old slave who doesn’t want to cause any trouble with his white masters. This cartoon exploits that stereotype and others. A slave trader sells Uncle Tom to a white woman, but Uncle Tom escapes and gets rich playing craps (an old stereotype of black behavior).
“All This and Rabbit Stew” (1941). This one follows the typical formula of an Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs Bunny cartoon, except in this one Bugs is being hunted by a black character—or rather a black caricature, complete with exaggerated lips and mumble-mouth speech impediment. This cartoon also ends with a game of craps (Bugs, of course, wins).
Nazi Germany created children’s board games with titles like “Jews Out!” and “Bombers Over England.”
“Hittin’ the Trail for Hallelujah Land” (1931). A Mickey Mouse lookalike named Piggy has to get his girlfriend, Fluffy, and a character named Uncle Tom out of various dangerous situations. Several blackface characters sing the cartoon’s title song, which is an old African American spiritual.
“Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time” (1936). A blackface character named Nicodemus plays craps, gets knocked on the head, and dreams he goes to his final judgment. He’s found to be wicked, and sent to Hades, where a group of blackface demons bring him to the devil.
“Clean Pastures” (1937). In this religion-themed cartoon, God sends a slow-talking, slow-walking angel to Harlem to try to get people to renounce their wicked ways and come to heaven (called Pair-o-Dice). When that doesn’t work, God sends black jazz-musician angels instead.
“Jungle Jitters” (1938). A traveling salesman tries to sell housewares to a tribe of cannibals in the African jungle. The homely queen of the village falls in love with him, and to escape her advances, the traveling salesman throws himself into a cooking pot, implying he’d rather get eaten than marry her. Oddly, the African cannibal queen was drawn as a Caucasian woman because the Hays Code (the morality guidelines for the motion picture industry at the time) forbade depiction of interracial relationships.
“Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” (1943). After legendary cartoon director Bob Clampett was asked by the cast of an African American musical—Duke Ellington’s Jump for Joy—why there were no black Warner Bros. characters, Clampett came up with this jazz parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs where all the characters are in blackface.
“The Isle of Pingo Pongo” (1938). A travelogue about the inhabitants of a remote jungle island. It has all the usual black stereotypes: natives with bones in their hair, rings in their noses, and plates in their lips, carrying spears—along with jitterbug dancers and a jazz orchestra.
“Angel Puss” (1944). An African American boy named Sambo gets paid “four bits” (50¢) to drown his cat, but the cat outsmarts him and escapes, then paints himself white and pretends to be a ghost cat. The frightened boy eventually wises up, finds a shotgun, and kills the cat.
Food for thought: Massachusetts and Illinois both have towns called Sandwich.
“Tin Pan Alley Cats” (1943). Another Bob Clampett jazz cartoon in which a cat who looks and sings like jazz legend Fats Waller is so entranced by a jazz band in a nightclub that he drifts off to a surreal fantasy land where he encounters World War II villains Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Hideki Tojo. When he comes back to reality, he’s so freaked out by what he saw in his dream world that he gives up the jazz nightlife and joins the religious band playing outside the club.
“Goldilocks and the Jivin’ Bears” (1944). A retelling of the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” story, except the bears are blackface jazz musicians…and also Goldilocks (reimagined as a leggy young black woman in high heels) is nearly devoured by the Big Bad Wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood.” The jazz trio saves her by playing a song so hot the Big Bad Wolf jitterbugs himself to exhaustion.
FACTIEST FACTS
•Country with the longest name (one word only): Liechtenstein (13 letters).
•City with the longest average round-trip home-to-work commute time: Washington, DC (60.42 minutes).
•Deepest subway station in the world: Arsenalna Station, on the Kiev Metro line in Kiev, Ukraine (it’s 346 feet below street level; it takes a full five minutes for escalators to reach the surface).
•World’s busiest shipping lane: the Dover Strait, between the UK and France (500–600 ships pass through the strait every day).
•Skinniest tower in the world: British Airways i360 Tower in Brighton, England (it’s 531 feet tall—and just 12.7 feet in diameter, giving it a 40:1 height-to-diameter ratio).
•Deepest river in the worl
d: the Congo River in central Africa (scientists have not been able to determine the Congo’s exact depth; the deepest they have been able to measure is 720 feet).
•Largest irrigation system in the world: the Sukkur Barrage on the Indus River, near the city of Sukkur in northern Pakistan (a barrage is a type of dam with controllable gateways used to divert water; the Sukkur Barrage is more than a mile long, has more than 60 gates, and irrigates 7.63 million acres of land).
•World’s widest human tongue: 3.37 inches (Byron Schlenker, Syracuse, New York).
•World’s widest human tongue (female): 2.89 inches (Emily Schlenker—Byron’s daughter).
Mini, but mighty: Caterpillars have seven times as many muscles as humans do.
STOP THE PRESSES!
If you saw a children’s book with a title like one of these, would you be so intrigued that you’d pick it up? Probably…which could be why the authors gave them these titles. And, yes, these were all actually published.
My Parents Open Carry, by Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew
See Dick Bite Jane, by Elise Mac Adam
I Wish Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much, by Judith Vigna
Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader Page 64