Why Did Being Left-Handed Turn Bessie Blount Griffin Into an Inventor and Handwriting Analyst?

Her elementary teacher rapped Bessie Blount Griffin's knuckles when she wrote with her left hand. Bessie's answer: She not only learned to be ambidextrous, but she also learned to write with her feet and her teeth.

Bessie Blount Griffin

If it was wrong to write with her left hand, the child reasoned, it must also be wrong to write with her right hand.

But this experience led to a lifetime of helping disabled people.

Bessie, born in 1914 in Virginia, attended a one-room schoolhouse built after the Civil War for children of former slaves. After sixth grade, she had to educate herself, as no secondary schools in her area accepted black students. She eventually made her way to New Jersey and was admitted to Union College and Panzer College of Physical Education and Hygiene. She became a nurse and a physical therapist.

Bessie Blount Griffin assisting a disabled
veteran to write with his toes.
Photo: Bessie Blount Griffin Foundation

It was her work as a licensed physiotherapist that led to her becoming an inventor--that and her natural curiosity and determination to help people. While working at Bronx Hospital in New York with World War II veterans who had lost hands on the battlefield, she realized that her own experience could help them. She began teaching them to write with their feet and their teeth. "You're only crippled in your mind," she told them.

Soon, she was experimenting with a feeding device that would allow a person without the use of arms to be more independent. The individual could bite on a tube and have bites of food delivered to his or her mouth. In 1951, she patented a portion of her design, a neck brace that supported a bowl or cup close to the mouth.

Portable Receptacle Support,"
B.V. Griffin, April 24, 1951,
U.S. Pat. No. 2,550,554 U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office

Bessie approached the U.S. Veterans Administration with her invention, but they were not interested. Neither was the American Veterans Association. Instead, she donated the rights to the French government, which put it to widespread use in their military hospitals.

Next, Bessie devised a disposable cardboard emesis basin. Since the VA showed no interest in this invention either, she licensed the patent for use in Belgian hospitals, where it remains standard equipment.

Because of her inventions, Bessie was featured on a TV show, The Big Idea, in 1953, becoming the first woman and the first African-American to appear on the show about the latest inventions. According to sources, she was not as interested in making money as she was in helping people. She is quoted as saying she had proved "that a black woman can invent something for the benefit of humankind."

Always looking for a new challenge, Bessie began to study handwriting analysis. She noticed her patients' handwriting would change depending on their condition, and she believed there were parallels between a person's physical and emotional well-being and their handwriting.

She specialized in graphology, the analysis of handwriting to profile behavior. A person's signature, she said, is as valid as fingerprints for identifying an individual. Police departments in New Jersey and Virginia hired her to conduct forensic research. In 1977, she became the first African-American woman to train and work in the documents division at Scotland Yard.

When she returned to the U.S., she continued her work as a forensic science consultant into her eighties. She worked with museums and researchers, using handwriting analysis to auth2oth Centicate documents related to slavery, the Civil War, and Native American treaties. Her family reported that she also continued to invent but did not apply for any other patents.

At the age of 94, she visited the site of the schoolhouse she had attended as a child in Virginia. Though it had burned, she wanted to build a museum there to honor the school's legacy. However, Bessie died just a year later, in 2009, before she was able to achieve that goal.

Nevertheless, the legacy of Bessie Blount Griffin lives on in her inventions, her forensic research, and her contributions for the benefit of others.

Sources:

The Inspirational Story Of Bessie Blount Griffin, The Trailblazing Wartime Physical Therapist and Forensic Scientist, Bessie Blount Griffin, The Pioneering Black Inventor And Nurse (allthatsinteresting.com)

Bessie Blount Griffin (1914-2009) • (blackpast.org)

Hidden Histories: Bessie Blount Griffin – Yale Scientific Magazine

The Woman Who Made a Device to Help Disabled Veterans Feed Themselves—and Gave It Away for Free | Innovation| Smithsonian Magazine

Bessie Blount Griffin: A Black Woman's Journey to Pioneering Forensic Scientist - A&E True Crime (aetv.com)

“Bessie Blount Griffin,” Virginia Inven, accessed May 5, 2024, https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/changemakers/items/show/169

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and 1940s. Her historical short story, “All That Glistens,” won honorable mention in the 2023 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest.

Another historical short story tells of a cafe waitress who waits for the love of her life to come back to her after the war. “A Song for Annie” is available free when you sign up for Marie's newsletter here. In her newsletter, she shares about her writing, historical tidbits, recommended books, and sometimes recipes.

The History of the Ironing Board

Blogger: Amber Lemus

Photo by CottonBro Studio

The ancient Asian method

If you’ve ever tried to iron something without an ironing board, then you know how difficult it can be. (Believe it or not, there is in fact a reason that irons have a warning that says DO NOT iron clothes while you are wearing them!") The ironing board seems to be a simple invention, but it makes an everyday chore far more efficient, and the history behind it is more interesting than you might think.

Ironing has been a chore usually done by ladies for centuries. Ancient Asian cultures would sometimes iron with the fabric held taught by two people. During the Viking era, archeologists have discovered what appear to be smoothing boards made from whale bone buried with Viking ladies. Later on, boards small enough to be held on the lap were most common. “Press boards” as they were known, were used not only for pressing laundry, but also for pressing seams during the sewing process.

 

Whalebone smoothing board from the Vikings.

As I’m sure many of you have witnessed, a table or board supported by two chairs can be used to accomplish the task, and was a popular method before the invention of the folding ironing board we know today. Eventually, folks figured it would be faster and better quality work if there was a device designed with a suitable shape for pressing things such as trousers and shirts. The first ironing table was patented in 1858 by W. Vandenburg and J. Harvey, and was designed mainly for men’s clothing.

A Canadian by the name of John B. Porter invented the first truly portable ironing table. It was a fold-able model with detachable press boards specifically for sleeves.

Sarah Boone
Public Domain

One notable improvement to the ironing board was invented by Sarah Boone in 1892. Sarah had been born to enslaved parents in North Carolina. At some point, she gained her freedom, perhaps through her marriage to a free African American man. They later migrated North, where Sarah began working in a dressmaker shop, and her husband worked as a bricklayer. Sarah’s work in the fiercely competitive dress market is what spurred her adjustments to the ironing board. Her design catered to women’s garments, rather than just men’s, with a narrower, curved board that could handle the type of skirts and dresses that were in style at the time. It was reversible, so that both sides of the sleeve could be ironed without wrinkling the first side. Her model was also padded to prevent the lines and creases that inevitably came when using just a wooden board. She even made it collapsible for easy storage. Sarah is credited as the second African American woman to receive a patent from the U.S. Patent office. 

 

Drawing from Sarah Boone's Patent

The next notable improvement was the material. Many manufacturers tried wood and metal, but the metal tended to rust or even buckle under the intense heat of a hot iron press. The wooden boards would warp. It was the J.R. Clark company who began manufacturing ironing boards out of a mesh metal top, which allowed the steam to escape, preventing warps, rust and buckling. By 1940, pretty much all of the manufacturers were using all metal to make the collapsible ironing boards. The designs changed very little after that. 

Now if they would only invent a way to keep it from screaming like a mountain lion every time it opens...

*****

 

Two-time winner of the Christian Indie Award for historical fiction, Amber Lemus inspires hearts through enthralling tales She has a passion for travel, history, books and her Savior. This combination results in what her readers call "historical fiction at its finest".

She lives near the Ozarks in her "casita" with her prince charming. Between enjoying life as a boy mom, and spinning stories out of soap bubbles, Amber loves to connect with readers and hang out on Goodreads with other bookish peoples.

Amber is a proud member of the American Christian Fiction Writers Association. Visit her online at http://www.amberlemus.com/ and download a FREE story by subscribing to her Newsletter!

Margaret Knight: The Most Famous 19th Century Woman Inventor

Blogger: Amber Lemus

Newspaper article about Margaret Knight
Public Domain.

Continuing from our post on shopping bags last month, today we explore the fascinating and inspiring life of female inventor, Margaret Knight. February happens to be her birth month also!

Young girl working in a cotton mill
Public Domain

"Mattie" was born to Hannah Teal and James Knight on February 14, 1838 in York, Maine. She was known as a very odd little girl, because instead of dolls she preferred woodworking tools. Her father died when she was very young, so she and her two brothers were raised by her widowed mother. Life was very hard for them, and she didn't receive much education, since she had to leave school as soon as she was old enough to start working in the cotton mill with her brothers.


Mattie's first invention was spurred by yet another traumatic event. At age twelve, she was working in the cotton mill when a nearby machine malfunctioned, and sent a steel-tipped shuttle shooting out of the machine and into a young boy. Terrorized by the event, she immediately set to work and conceived a safety device to shut off the machine if something went wrong. Her device was developed and put into use, supposedly by mills all over the country. However she would never see a dime from that invention.

Before long, Mattie developed health conditions that prevented her from continuing to work in the cotton mill. She tried many different things to earn a living, including home repair, engraving and furniture upholstery. In 1867, near age thirty, Mattie moved to Springfield, Massachusetts and began working in a paper bag factory. The bags they made were envelope style, but they had several issues that made them less functional. However, flat-bottomed bags were more expensive to produce, since they had to be made by hand. Mattie's mind set to work on that problem.

About a year later, in 1868, Mattie invented a machine that cut, folded, and glued paper to form flat-bottomed brown paper bags, much like the ones we know today. This machine would greatly increase the speed of production for these bags, allowing a mass manufacturing of the more efficient design.

Another of Knight's Patents for a rotary engine.
Public Domain

This time, Mattie knew the value of what she had, and she intended to go about it in a way that would allow her to patent the machine and reap the rewards of her labor. She made her own wooden prototype, but she needed a working iron model in order to apply for a patent. So she went to a machine shop to get it built. But when Mattie went to patent her design, she discovered that someone else had already done so.

Charles Annan was either working at the shop to build the prototype, or was near enough to see the design as it was in the making, and he stole the design and filed his own patent. During this point in history, patents hadn't been awarded to women, at least not openly. Women would disguise their names by only using initials so their names were not perceived as female. But this was something Mattie was willing to fight for. She took Annan to court, shelling out over $100/day in legal fees (something around $2,143 today) to win back her patent. Annan argued that his invention was different than Mattie's, and that she never developed a fully functional machine. He even went so far as to state that "she could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities of the machine". Most consider this comment to stem from his prejudice against women, although some debate that point. Either way, Mattie had to bring witnesses, and copious amounts of evidence to prove the invention was actually hers. After a sixteen day hearing, which would have cost her over $1600 (over $34,000 in today's market.) she won the case and her patent was awarded in 1871.


From there, Mattie was able to sustain herself from the royalties of her patents. She continued to invent and registered more than 80 patents during her lifetime. Later in life, as she reflected on her accomplishments she said, "I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly." She is one of the most saluted women in the suffrage movement, because she demonstrated women's cognitive abilities and succeeded in a predominately male field.

Some articles have claimed that she was the first woman to receive a U.S. Patent, however that doesn't seem to hold up to fact checking.

Regardless, Margaret E. Knight is an inspiring person who despite countless trials, setbacks, and even having to fight for a place in the world, rose above it all to succeed at what she loved.

Today, I'd love to know what that would be for you. If you could rise above it all and succeed in a field, what field would that be? Leave me a comment below the blog post and let me know.

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Two-time winner of the Christian Indie Award for historical fiction, Amber Lemus inspires hearts through enthralling tales She has a passion for travel, history, books and her Savior. This combination results in what her readers call "historical fiction at its finest".

She lives near the Ozarks in her "casita" with her prince charming. Between enjoying life as a boy mom, and spinning stories out of soap bubbles, Amber loves to connect with readers and hang out on Goodreads with other bookish peoples.

Amber is a proud member of the American Christian Fiction Writers Association. Visit her online at http://www.amberlemus.com/ and download a FREE story by subscribing to her Newsletter!