The awards and the articles came when she was in her eighties and nineties, in the final years of a long life.

The commercial success that her inventions deserved — the manufacturing contracts, the licensing fees, the royalties that could have provided financial security — had not come, or had come in diminished form after the long years of rejection and waiting.

The recognition was real, but it was also late.

This is a pattern in the history of overlooked inventors and artists and scholars: the posthumous or near-posthumous recognition that acknowledges what should have been acknowledged during the years when acknowledgment could have made a material difference.

Recovering someone’s history is important and necessary, but it is not the same as providing what they deserved when they deserved it.