Mary Kenner’s story is also a story about the barriers faced by women inventors, barriers that operated alongside and in some cases compounded the racial barriers she faced as a Black woman.

Women have been inventing things throughout human history, and have been obtaining patents in the United States since the patent system was established.

Mary Kies received the first patent granted to an American woman in 1809, for a method of weaving straw with silk or thread.

In the decades that followed, women inventors obtained patents for a wide range of products, from household items to industrial processes to communications technologies.

But the path from having a patent to having a commercial product was, for women, complicated by a specific set of barriers that reflected the gender norms of American society.