That question is live, and its answer is being determined now, in the investment decisions of venture capital firms and the hiring decisions of patent law firms and the programming decisions of educational institutions and the acquisitions decisions of publishers and the editorial decisions of journalists.

Each of these decisions either extends the tradition that made Mary Kenner unknown or works against it.

Her story is an argument — made in the specific language of a documented life, of patents granted and rejected and eventually commercialized — for extending the history of American invention to include everyone who has contributed to it.

The argument is compelling not because it is sentimental but because it is accurate.

She invented.