Eunice Newton Foote, Scientist and Inventor

Eunice Newton Foote, scientist and inventor (born 17 July 1819)

Writing about Eunice Newton Foote as part of the New York Times "Overlooked No More" series, John Schwartz notes that her "ingenious experiment more than 150 years ago yielded a remarkable discovery that could have helped shape modern climate science had she not been overshadowed."

Eunice Foote's 1856 paper , published in
the American Journal of Science and the Arts

Could have, Schwartz says, because "the scientific paper she published that might have added her name to the pantheon of early climate scientists was quickly forgotten, and she faded into obscurity. There isn’t even a known photograph of her today."

Now, however, Eunice Newton Foote's name and her scientific observations have begun to gain recognition, as the "overlooked no more" obituary demonstrates. Better late than never?

Born in Goshen, Connecticut, Eunice Newton was the daughter of the wonderfully named "Isaac Newton." (He was actually "Isaac Newton Jr.," the son of a farmer named Isaac Newton, also from Goshen). Her mother's given name was Thirza (her surname is unknown). 

Together Isaac and Thirza Newton had eleven children and, at some point, Newton relocated from Goshen to East Bloomfield, New York. The family's fortunes rose and fell--at one point Isaac Newton seems to have become wealthy (due to his "large and bold" speculation), but at the time of his death, he "was much embarrassed with debt."

While nothing is known of Eunice Newton's childhood, records indicate that she was enrolled at the Troy Female Seminary from 1836 to 1838. While there, she seems to have attended science lectures at Rensellaer School, co-founded by Amos Eaton, a man dedicated to the belief that women should be educated in the sciences.

In 1841, Eunice Newton married Elisha Foote. The couple had two daughters, Mary, born in 1842, and Augusta, in 1844. 

Elisha Foote, a lawyer and inventor, had been trained in the law by Daniel Cady, the father of the suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Elisha Foote practiced law and then became a judge in Seneca Falls, New York. It should be no surprise, then, that both Elisha and Eunice Newton Foote attended the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, signing the "Declaration of Sentiments." Along with Stanton, Eunice Foote prepared the proceedings of the convention for publication.

Signatories of the "Declaration of Sentiments,"
Seneca Falls Convention;
Eunice Newton Foote's name is fifth on the list

By 1856, Eunice Newton Foote had written a scientific paper that was accepted for presentation at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Through a series of experiments, she had demonstrated the effect of the sun on various gases, in the process discovering that carbon dioxide became hottest. She then theorized about the effect of these gases on the earth's atmosphere, concluding that “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature.”

Though her paper had been accepted for presentation at the association's meeting, as a woman Foote was not able to present it herself. Instead her paper was read by Joseph Henry, director of the Smithsonian Institution.

About the "gender disparities" that were apparent in this arrangement, Leila McNeill writes:

At the meeting, Henry appended Foote’s paper with his own added preface: “Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true.” The introduction, intended to praise Foote, more than anything highlights her difference as a woman in a sea of men, indicating that her presence among them was indeed unusual and needed justification. Even Scientific American’s praise of Foote’s paper was included in a column two pages after the AAAS meeting report. Though both Henry and Scientific American seemed to see Foote as an equal in scientific endeavors, she was still kept separate from the fold.

In 1857, Foote published a second scientific paper, "On a New Source of Electrical Excitation," in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

In addition to her scientific experimentation, Foote received a patent for a rubber filling to improve the soles of boots and shoes (intended to "prevent the squeaking of boots and shoes"), and she developed a machine to improve paper making. 

According to a genealogical study of the Newton, Eunice Newton Foote was also a portrait and landscape painter. 

She died on 30 September 1888, just sixty-nine years old. 

For understanding Eunice Newton Foote's scientific achievement (and the reasons why her achievements were "lost"), I recommend Leila McNeill's Smithsonian essay, quoted above (click here) and John Perlin's "Foote-Note" on "the hidden history" of climate science (click here).

There is a short film, Eunice, available by clicking here. Also online is a presentation from the "Science Knows No Gender: In Search of Eunice Foote" symposium (UC Santa Barbara, 2018), particularly interesting for information about Foote's education, about Adam Eaton, and about the Troy Female Seminary (click here).

Update, 17 November 2021: As part of its "Retropolis" series, the Washington Post has just published another piece on the accomplishments--and disappearing--of Eunice Foote. Click here to read Gillian Brockell's "Did the 'father of climate science' steal his discovery from Eunice Newton Foote?" (The "Retropolis" series focuses on "the past, rediscovered.")

Update, 22 September 2022: This week's episode on the BBC's The Forum, hosted by the amazing Bridget Kendall, is "A Forgotten Founder of Climate Science: Eunice Newton Foote." To listen, click here.

Sybilla Masters, American Inventor

Sybilla Righton Masters (died 23 August 1720)

I just ran across a reference to the colonial woman Sybilla Righton Masters, an inventor who received two patents. Well, that's not entirely correct--although she did invent a corn mill and a new fabric, as a woman she could not patent her inventions in her own name. And so the patents were issued to her husband.

Patent drawings for
Masters's corn mill

Sybilla Righton was the daughter of William Righton and Sarah Murrell. Her place of birth is unclear--her Quaker father immigrated from Bermuda in 1687, and Sybilla, the second child born to the couple, may have been born there or on her father's new planation in Delaware Township, in the colony of West New Jersey. The first record of Sybilla dates to 1692, when she was a witness on behalf of her father. 

Sybilla Righton married Thomas Masters, a Quaker merchant, at some point between 1693 and 1696, moving with him to Philadelphia. There, in addition to raising her four children, she invented a corn processing mill that produced a corn meal she called Tuscarora Rice. Her mill pulverized corn rather than grinding it.

She also invented a new fabric worked out of straw and palmetto, ideal for making products like hats and bonnets.

In 1712, she traveled to England to obtain patents for her inventions. While waiting, and since she had been granted a monopoly for the importation of palmetto leaf, she opened a store in London selling hats, bonnets, and chair coverings made from her straw and palmetto fabric. 

On 25 November 1715, letters of patent for her corn mill were issued in her husband's name, Patent #401, a patent for "Cleaning and Curing the Indian Corn Growing in the several Colonies in America." While the patent was issued to Thomas Masters, the letters of patent did note it was for “a new invention found out by Sybilla, his wife.”

On 18 February 1716, letters of patent for her process of weaving straw and palmetto were issued, Patent #403, for "Working and Weaving in a New Method, Palmetto Chip and Straw for Hats and Bonnets and other improvements of that Ware." Again, the patent was issued to Thomas Masters, not Sybilla, the letter of patent noting it was for “a new way of working & staining in straw, & the plat & leaf of the palmetto tree, & covering & adorning hats & bonnets in such a manner as was never before done or practiced in England or any of our plantations.”

When she returned to Philadelphia, Thomas Masters petitioned for recognition of "her" British patents, which were then reissued, since the Pennsylvania colony was now approving its own patents. 

Sibylla Masters remained the only woman to have patented an invention until 1793, when Hannah Wilkinson Slater became the first woman in the United States to be issued a patent--for a cotton thread to be used in her husband's factories. 

Slater, too, seems little recognized. According to a comprehensive report issued by the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor  in 1923, not a single patent was issued to a woman in the nineteen years following the 1790 enactment of the U.S. patent law (10,000 patents were issued to men during those years). The report claims that the first patent issued to a woman occurred in 1809--when a patent was issued to Mary Kries. Her patent was for weaving straw with silk. Most online sites still indicate that Mary Kries was the first U..S. woman to receive a patent.

Over the course of the next twenty-five years, fewer than a "score" of patents were issued to women. 

In 1921, the lastest figures in 1923 report, women in the U.S. were issued 566 of the 37,335 U.S. patents granted that year--1.5 percent.

For an extended entry on Sybilla Masters, see vol. 2 of Notable American Women