Beulah Louise Henry

Beulah was such a prolific inventor in the early 20th century that the press nicknamed her Lady Edison. She was an outlier as an unmarried woman who got her foot in the door as an inventor by pounding the pavement in 1920s New York.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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  We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.

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  The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune into Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:15Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:25Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:30Holly Frey?

  I don't fully know how I came across this person as a topic today.

• 2:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  This happens to me sometimes.

• 2:36Holly Frey?

  I was noodling around for things, as I often do, because I'm trying to make like a pretty comprehensive list, which I don't always do for the next couple of months because both of us have travel and we're heading into holiday season and like autumn is my crazy time anyway. So I'm trying to, you know, come up with my list that's the go-tos will be ready. And I somehow came across this newspaper photo while I was probably looking at something else. And it was this woman named Beulah Henry, and I was captivated. She had this gorgeous, wide-brimmed, black hat on, and the headline was about her being an inventor. And I was like, what? This is clearly my kind of lady.

• 3:17Holly Frey?

  Then I was very chagrined to discover that that write-up speaks ill of her style and says that she's got an old-fashioned mode of dress. And I was like, ugh, she's got style. It's never old-fashioned. But anyway, I then became fixated on Beulah Henry. And Beulah was such a prolific inventor in the 20th century, in the early 20th century, that the press actually nicknamed her Lady Edison, which was a name she didn't actually like.

• 3:47Holly Frey?

  She was an outlier in that she was an unmarried woman who truly got her foot in the door as an inventor by pounding the pavement in 1920s New York, trying to find fabricators who could help her bring her sometimes seemingly outlandish ideas to life. And once she did find people that she could work with, she maintained a lot of those relationships long-term, and she kind of ran her operation of being a full-time inventor like a well-oiled machine. And she always claimed that she just couldn't help it. She once told a reporter, quote, "I invent because I cannot help it. New things just thrust themselves upon me." So we're going to talk about Beulah Henry today.

• 4:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Beulah Louise Henry was born on September 28, 1887, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her family is often described as living in Charlotte, North Carolina. That's about 170 miles away, although her grandmother did live in Raleigh, and it seems like she spent some time in both places as a kid. Her father, Walter Henry, was an attorney, and her mother, Beulah Holden Henry, was a homemaker. Some accounts say that her mother was an artist, but that's not fully clear. Beulah is always described as an observant and creative child, although it's worth noting that most of those accounts are based on descriptions she gave of herself to the press later in her life.

• 5:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Her first idea that hinted at her having a future as an inventor came when she was just six years old. She was watching a flag being lowered from a post office flagpole. She noticed that sometimes the flag grazed the ground, and the U.S. Flag Code states that, quote, "The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise." Talk about this a bit more on Friday. So Beulah came up with an idea to prevent the flag from touching the ground. Quote, "There should be a hole right through that pole so the flag could drop through and never touch the ground." I have to confess, I don't understand how this would work.

• 5:55Holly Frey?

  I have to confess, I spent a long time really puzzling over this myself. And I don't know 100%, but I think what she's getting at is that the pole should somehow be hollow so the flag could be pulled in. But I'm not positive about that. And again, she's relaying what she remembered her six-year-old self saying. So nobody ever seemed to follow up, like, what do you mean, Beulah? They're like, oh, inventive, six-year-old, hooray. So we don't know. I can't, if you out there in our audience can think of a way that this would function that is not a hollow pole, bring it on, send us a sketch.

• 6:35Holly Frey?

  She continued to sketch things allegedly as a kid, but when she was nine years old, Beulah created her first invention. And this was a hands-free device that would enable the wearer to do various things, like maintain social decorum by tipping their hat or carry groceries, even if their hands were full because they were carrying a newspaper, which seems like a sort of charming problem for a nine-year-old to think needs solving. Beulah's solution was a belt that had a paper holder attached to it. Again, we don't know exactly how this worked or what she was intending. I'm like, is there a way? Does she think you just put the paper down? Does she, is she imagining you're holding it open to read?

• 7:20Holly Frey?

  I don't know.

• 7:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  I had just kind of a go-go gadget arm, maybe, imagination where there would be a holder holding the paper open while you were doing your other things with your anatomical hands.

• 7:33Holly Frey?

  Yeah, maybe. I don't know. But also, if that's the case, you shouldn't be walking around holding, reading a paper. But listen, this never got past the prototype stage for whatever her nine-year-old build was. I would yearn to see what that looked like. But it does evidence Beulah's inventive and creative approach to solving what she considered to be everyday problems.

• 7:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  After high school, she attended Queens College and Elizabeth College in Charlotte, North Carolina. After she graduated, she and her family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. While she was still a college student, Beulah Henry applied for and was granted her first patent for setup. This is a time when ice was not as readily available to consumers. You could not freeze your own ice. You had to have it delivered. So if you wanted to make ice cream at home, you could really blaze through your ice supply. And Beulah wanted a more efficient way. Per her patent, quote, "This invention relates to ice cream freezers and has for an object

• 8:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  to provide a freezer, which will include a freezing chamber surrounded by an insulating walled structure, so that a freezing temperature in the freezing chamber can be effectively retained to affect a rapid freezing of the cream with a minimum expenditure of ice. Another object of the invention is to provide a freezer that can be readily and effectively used as a water cooler." This was a somewhat novel patent in that it could be hand cranked or motor cranked if the user had access to electricity. That was not actually common in most homes at the time. In 1910, only one in seven homes in the US had electricity.

• 9:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  That patent was granted in 1912, so Beulah was very forward thinking with that motor option.

• 9:26Holly Frey?

  She applied for another patent at the same time, which was a multi-use parasol. This one is really kind of cool. I'm a little bit in love with it. So the patent for it reads, quote, "The general objects of the invention are to adapt a sunshade or parasol to be folded into a comparatively small compass when not in use and to combine a vanity case with the handle thereof." So in the tip of the parasol, like the top tip, if you held it open, it's the part that's at the top, was a compass. So, once you had it folded down, you could just hold your thing and use that compass. And then the handle contained, quote, "A chamber formed in the handle section of the

• 10:06Holly Frey?

  stick, said chamber being interiorly divided into compartments, adapted for the reception of coins of different denominations or sizes, and further subdivided into covered compartments, adapted to contain face powder and the like." So, the handle of the parasol consisted of this beautiful, at least in the patent application drawings, little hinged box that was, you know, kind of a rectangle. And when it opened, it was like a streamlined coin purse and makeup compact. I'm in love with this thing. She received the patent on this one a couple of months after the Icemaker patent.

• 10:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  The following year, she patented another invention having to do with style, and that was a handbag. The goal of this invention was to enable people who carried handbags to always match their purse to their style. It was described in the patent this way, quote, "This invention relates to handbags, and one of the principal objects of the invention is to provide a device of this character having interchangeable covers whereby the same may be used with gowns of different shades, thereby avoiding the necessity of having a number of handbags and of using a handbag of some color that does not match with the gown being worn. A further object of the invention is to provide a handbag of this character, which

• 11:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  consists of a frame, having an ordinary bag secured thereto in the usual manner, and a covering adapted to be removable attached to said bag so that coverings of different color or material may be used. And so, the removable cover is provided for toilet and shopping requisites carried by the outside of the bag so as to leave the inside of the purse free to receive other articles."

• 11:55Holly Frey?

  This is one of those things that was so novel at the time, and you still see these kinds of handbags marketed today.

• 12:03Holly Frey?

  After college and after spending a few years in Memphis, Beulah and her mother moved to New York City. Some accounts of her life, including one published online by the US Patent Office, state that the whole family moved to New York. But it was, to me, until this morning, a little unclear what was going on regarding her father. Tracy had access to some records that her father must have moved with them because he died in New York in 1935. So, he was there, but it's a little bit interesting because even when he would have been there, there were newspaper reports about Beulah, and they always referenced her and her mother and never her father. So, it's not clear. Maybe he just didn't want to be in the public eye.

• 12:46Holly Frey?

  Maybe he was getting older and just didn't feel up to it. Unclear, but he was with them, at least for the first part of this move. Her mother ended up living with Beulah for most of the rest of her life, and she actually said to a reporter in 1923, quote, "I don't know what to make of her. She gets up at night and prowls around making experiments with the electric lights and the water system, or hunting for sheets of brown paper to draw on or cut up."

• 13:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1921, Beulah revisited the parasol, this time harkening back to her customizable purse accessory. This parasol had changeable covers so that it too could match your outfit. This particular invention, refined in the new patent, was a bigger success in 1921 when Beulah had some experience than it had been back in 1913 when she was still a student with no capital. This time, she was able to get her parasol into production through her new business, the Henry Umbrella and Parasol Company, and it was a hit. But she faced a lot of resistance when trying to get fabricators to take her seriously.

• 13:55Holly Frey?

  She later described going to numerous umbrella manufacturers and explaining her invention to them, only to be told that it was going to be impossible to actually make it. She later told a reporter, quote, "Everyone said it wouldn't work, piercing steel ribs with the snaps necessary to hold the covers in place. Even the model makers refused to try." So, she took matters into her own hands, and she made her own rudimentary prototype to show one of the manufacturers exactly what she wanted. And this worked. She got it to work basically the way she wanted, at least for demonstration. And the man that she spoke with when she brought him this version of hers admitted that it was something that could be done, and he said that he wanted to be the one

• 14:40Holly Frey?

  to make them. She later said of this moment, quote, "I knew then that I had won." After it went into production, this parasol was really popular. It got the interest of a lot of large retailers. I read one account that said that it was a whole window display, I think at like a Lord & Taylor.

• 14:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Coming up, we'll talk about how Beulah parlayed that success into a lifelong career. But first, we will pause for a sponsor break.

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• 16:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fans' experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

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• 20:17Holly Frey?

  The success of the changeable cover parasol gave Beulah Henry the confidence to make New York her permanent home. She wanted to establish a place there in the city that could be both a residence and a business office, so she rented hotel suites to serve as temporary bases of operation, out of which she ran the company that she established, the B.L. Henry Company. And I call them temporary because even though she lived in and decorated these suites as more or less permanent residences, she did move from hotel to hotel from time to time. And the biggest driver in the selection of her hotel locations was proximity to manufacturers, also engineers and attorneys that she would need because she was patenting everything

• 21:02Holly Frey?

  she invented. And she recognized that she did not have the expertise to build all of the things that she dreamed up. She didn't have any training as an engineer or a fabricator, we'll talk about that some more later, and she certainly did not know anything about patent law. So she assembled a team of people who had the skills that she did not to execute her visions and to protect her interests.

• 21:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Henry was also interested in diversifying. It was not as though she wanted to make her whole living from umbrellas only. And her next area of interest was toys. In 1925, she received a patent for an improvement to plush toys that added springs to them. The invention was the core of the toy, which was intended to be licensed to manufacturers so that they could make toys that children could pose, and then those toys would spring back to their original neutral position.

• 21:57Holly Frey?

  Choosing to market her ideas to manufacturers instead of trying to make a consumer goods item was a very lucrative move. And from these early inventions on, she was very smart about how she used the money that she made from these deals. She invested her profits into herself and her business, and into paying her team, and into funding the next invention, or series of them, always. And she ran her hotel suite operation on this rolling basis this way. So she would have a new idea, she would pass it off to draftsmen and prototype fabricators as soon as they had finished the previous thing she had them working on. And then that project would move on to the patent attorney, once they had finished with it, for write-up and filing.

• 22:42Holly Frey?

  And all the while, Beulah was coming up with new ideas and feeding those draftsmen and fabricators again, and it just kept going in this ongoing loop.

• 22:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay, these were not always easy handoffs, though. Beulah once told a reporter, quote, "I say to the engineers, build me such and such. And they say to me, Miss Henry, it couldn't possibly work. And I say to them, I don't know if it will work, but I'm looking at it." And so they build it, and it works. Just to be clear, when she said, "I'm looking at it," she meant in her mind. So without trying to take away from her ability to come up with the good and creative ideas, a lot of the heavy lifting was being done by the team that she trusted to figure out how to make those ideas actually exist, after being formed with really no understanding of what kind of engineering they might require.

• 23:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  And she managed to patent about two patents a year with this team.

• 23:38Holly Frey?

  Yeah, there was one year, I think she got as many as four, but they were really like, "You want to do what now? Okay, we're gonna go figure out how to try to make this work." Staying in the realm of toys, Henry invented a doll that was also a radio, and she received a patent for that in late 1925. Her invention describes, quote, "A doll within which is supported a part or all of a complete radio apparatus." It also specifies that the radio apparatus is hidden from view but remains, quote, "capable of ready manipulation for the purposes of adjusting the set." Additional features were that the radio could be, quote, "readily mounted within the doll and removed therefrom at will," that it had to, quote, "fulfill all the functions of

• 24:22Holly Frey?

  a high-class radio set," and that it had to be, quote, "exceedingly attractive to children."

• 24:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1926, Beulah invented an item which you could argue was maybe not all that necessary. I went and looked at the patent for this because I was like, what is she actually describing here? So this was her indicator top. This was a spinning top that was meant to replace dice in games of chance. So instead of rolling a die, you would spin this top. And there were different colors, different numbers in this six-part top. Apparently, there were little, the balls that made the colors, you could swap them out. But this would be in lieu of the pips that represented numerical values on dice. The reason that this honestly seems kind of needless to me is that it was still six.

• 25:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Instead of six faces of a die, you had six different color options. Maybe it could be cool for like, specific games, manufacturers making some kind of customizable thing, but still at the core, incredibly similar to the six faces of a die with this six colors on the faces of a top.

• 25:35Holly Frey?

  Yeah, if it will help you to visualize it for anybody listening, like, it was like a six-sided dreidel, kind of, but in miniature. And so you would spin it where it landed. It just, I, like Tracy, was reading through the patent and going, why would you select this over a die? Unless you just prefer colors to pips.

• 25:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. You could also make a die with six different colors on the faces. I'm gonna say, knowing a friend who is both involved in creating games and colorblind, colors on the faces is not the most accessible way to do it.

• 26:12Holly Frey?

  Yeah. Another patent, which was granted on August 16, 1927, was what she called simply "watersport apparatus," which her patent described this way, quote, "A watersport apparatus which is buoyant to sustain a person afloat, the apparatus having novel structural features permitting a person to assume a sitting posture, and while in the sitting posture, to use the legs to propel the apparatus. Another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus of the indicated character for youngsters unable to swim, to safely sustain a youngster afloat for enjoying the pleasurable benefits of being in the water."

• 26:53Holly Frey?

  That description all sounds kind of dry, but the diagrams are adorable. It's sort of like a basic sling that's mounted on two poles, so a pole would be on either side of your body if you're sitting in it. But then it has a back little ledge that you can kind of recline onto, and there are three inflatable balls attached to the back for buoyancy. And then the front also has an inflatable ball, but the top of that one extends upward out of the water to look like a swan. It's so cute, I kind of want one. So a user could sit in the sling and kick their feet about without having to worry about staying afloat and admiring their beautiful swan.

• 27:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  As her list of patents grew, so did her public profile. And because of her unique life story and really self-guided career, reporters often asked to interview her. She gave a lot of really good quotes. One thing that she frequently told reporters was the explanation for her unique ability to envision things that even she did not fully understand. She said that she had synesthesia. That's a condition where the brain processes sensory information from unrelated senses. So for someone with synesthesia, a color might have a taste, or a number might have a color. It's a sensory crossover phenomenon, but it's not considered to be a medical condition.

• 28:19Holly Frey?

  Yeah, a lot of write-ups about her describe her as, you know, having this condition, or in some cases even suffering from this condition, and that's not medically how it's ever talked about. So I wanted to make sure we noted that. And in Beulah's case, she said that her synesthesia was something that she had, quote, "1 million percent," and that her brain's tendency to perceive seemingly unrelated and unconnected things in a way that grouped them together was part of how she could see finished solutions to common problems in the form of a fully complete invention. She always described seeing in her mind the full invention kind of in a flash. She also stated in the 1930s that she believed in spirit control, and that she thought a

• 29:02Holly Frey?

  guiding spirit often brought her these ideas. Beulah, like most people in the 1930s who ran businesses, faced a drop in her revenue. So for me, at least, it's easy to wonder if she didn't start saying sort of outlandish things as a way to bolster her name recognition and thus her business.

• 29:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to saying a lot of very quotable things, the way Beulah lived also offered reporters a lot of material for their pieces. Although she was living in hotels, she would decorate them when she moved in. And this was always in a style that was considered to be hyper feminine. There was a lot of pink. She also always had pets, turtles, parakeets, orioles, doves, cockatiels, and even a cat.

• 29:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Maybe risky with all those birds around, but maybe they were all secured from one another. She told a reporter that she loved cats more than inventing or any of her other pastimes. She also loved astronomy and there was a telescope always present in her rooms near a window so that she could look at the sky at night, which I love.

• 30:12Holly Frey?

  I do, too. One of the interesting things about Beulah Henry's public persona is how the media chose to photograph her. She was often photographed with a baby doll, one of her inventions, in her lap. And some of these photos even look, if you just glance at them, as though she is a mother with a baby. And this may have been an effort to make her more relatable to the general public. Because Beulah was not a mother, she was not married, she was a single woman who at that point was quite wealthy and undeniably successful. But instead of characterizing her truthfully as a trailblazer who had made a space for herself in industries where she was often the only woman, the choice was made to try

• 30:57Holly Frey?

  to make her appear more like a homemaker. And it seemed almost like writers wished to hyper feminize her in other ways. She was, by all accounts, very stereotypically feminine. But one reporter commented that her work suite looked, quote, "more like a boudoir than an office." One headline touted, "Beulah Henry sits in chiffon laboratory inventing almost everything but excuses." And that one actually referred to her as being, quote, "almost theatrically feminine." Articles often commented on her soft spoken nature and her charming southern accent. And if you start to read a lot of these, it really kind of seems as though there is this all cap subtext of, "Hey, you guys, she's a

• 31:42Holly Frey?

  woman."

• 31:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  There's also a weird secondary aspect of this constant focus on her womanhood that needs to be unpacked. Almost all of the articles about her in the 1930s comment on the fact that she had no training in engineering or mechanics. And she kind of played this up, claiming that it was actually a benefit to her because she never thought about the limitations that people who were educated in those fields might consider. She also often stated that a lot more women could be successful inventors if they just had a little confidence, sort of not really imagining the structural barriers to women's successes and ventures with that. So on the one hand, there's kind of a level of encouragement

• 32:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  with that, but there's also definitely a tone throughout all of the mentions about her lack of mechanical training, that such things were actually for men, and that her ingenuity was strictly because of her feminine outlook. So all of this is kind of a mixed bag.

• 32:44Holly Frey?

  Yeah. Uh, we are going to talk about one of our favorite subjects, certainly one of my favorite subjects, which is sewing machines, after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.

• 33:00Speaker 05

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• 34:25Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 34:41Speaker 05

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and

• 35:23Speaker 05

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• 35:48Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 35:56Holly Frey?

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• 36:40Holly Frey?

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• 36:59Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 37:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 38:04Holly Frey?

  In the second half of the 1930s, Beulah pivoted her creative problem solving to sewing machines. And she actually kind of changed the way the garment industry functioned. Any home sewist knows that home sewing machines have an upper thread and a bobbin, and so do a lot of industrial machines, even still. And just for listeners who do not sew, what that means is that a stitcher has to periodically stop and replace or refill the bobbin that's on the underside. Bobbins are notorious for running out of thread right when you're zipping along through the middle of a seam, and then you find out when you've complete that seam that half of your work didn't even really happen.

• 38:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's like they know.

• 38:48Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I have one on my embroidery machine that I have does a little like, "You're almost out of bobbin thread," so I can stop and like, fix it before everything goes to pot. But Beulah, after gazing at a marquee out of her window that had a unique frame, had a vision for a new kind of sewing machine that would solve this problem. So that frame to the sign was described in a newspaper write-up as, quote, "a ribbon of electric light that played back and forth in a scallop pattern." So Beulah thought, after watching this light play, that there was a way for a sewing machine to operate without needing a bobbin if it kind of mimicked the way that that frame seemed to twist onto itself.

• 39:32Holly Frey?

  I've also seen this frame described as being like chain link, but those two descriptions are so very different that I don't know what to do with it. But regardless of which one was the inspiration, whether it was a ribbon of light or chain link, Beulah claimed that she worked out the basis of the design in her room after looking at it using hairpins and a thread to mimic the movements that she thought the sewing machine would have to make to get rid of the bobbin.

• 40:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Her resulting patent was granted on April 21, 1936, and her double-chain-stitched sewing machine was designed to, quote, "provide a double-chain-stitched sewing machine of a novel construction wherein rectilinearly reciprocating needles operating alternately in opposite directions produce the double-chain-stitched formation."

• 40:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  This machine had no bobbin. And as the description states, it used a locking chain stitch to sew the fabric. This was a boon to women who worked in factories who were often paid by the piece based on their output volume. Without having to stop for bobbin changes, they were able to stitch more quickly. This invention predated the Fair Labor Standards Act in the US, which legally established minimum wage and overtime pay for most workers by two years. Today's chain stitch machines and chain stitch embroidery machines have Beulah's machines, which she refined and updated several times as their ancestor.

• 41:03Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I, um, you know, chain stitch embroidery machines are really popular right now. We can talk some more about that on Friday because there's an interesting thing. But yeah, they all kind of go back to this where she figured out how to make it all work together. But after the success of the chain stitch machine, Beulah Henry went back to dolls for inspiration. And soon she was working on dolls that could blink, make noise, and even move their mouths to speak.

• 41:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  As Henry's success grew, she engaged in philanthropy and supported a number of causes, including the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Women's League for Animals, and the New York Microscopical Society. During World War II, she stopped inventing. She felt duty bound to contribute to the war effort, which she did by working in a machine shop. But when the war ended, Beulah Henry was right back to work and her invention to patent pipeline started back up.

• 42:00Holly Frey?

  Yep. She went right back to that cycle that she had established. And it was during this post-war time that she invented a very unique and slightly entertaining, but also

• 42:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Gross.

• 42:10Holly Frey?

  kind of gross-out toy, if you're me, called the Milkamoo. This was a toy cow that had rubber udders and an internal liquid reservoir. So you could fill it with milk and then milk your toy cow. In a statement to a reporter, Beulah explained her inspiration by saying, quote, "Many boys and girls in the city never have a chance to see a real cow, and they think that milk comes only from bottles. Why, when the president of one of the country's biggest doll companies looked at this toy after I had made it, he didn't say a thing. He just walked out with it under his arm." Listen, you could interpret that as saying like, he just wanted it to go away. But in fact, it went into production and it was a very profitable toy for Henry.

• 42:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  I just have questions about how

• 42:58Holly Frey?

  Sanitation.

• 43:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. Like, I'm just gonna say, let's say, no child ever consumed this milk. I'm like, that would get gross and your toy cow would smell disgusting.

• 43:11Holly Frey?

  I will say, looking at diagrams, it looks like the udders would come off, so you could clean them.

• 43:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  I hope so.

• 43:17Holly Frey?

  But I don't know how many people were really giving them a proper scrub.

• 43:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 43:22Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 43:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Just imagining sour milk and it's not good.

• 43:26Holly Frey?

  Yeah, no.

• 43:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  We're jumping backwards a little bit to set up this next thing, because in 1932, Henry had been granted the patent for a device that the application called duplicating attachment for typewriters. It also came to be known as the Protograph. But this invention, which was designed to replace carbon paper, did not get a full-scale commercial launch for more than 20 years. In 1955, which is where we have caught up to on the timeline, Beulah's name was everywhere as she promoted this new product.

• 44:00Holly Frey?

  She told reporters, quote, "I invented it because I was angry. One day, I was typing a long letter with a carbon copy, and near the end, I discovered it was turned the wrong way. Crying with exasperation, I tugged the paper out of the machine and it fell on the floor under the desk. Right then, I was determined to never use carbon paper again. By the time I got up from under the desk, it was invented." That newspaper write-up, which was printed in papers all over the US, described the invention as a swinging arm that locked into place over the typewriter carriage and added two additional ribbons. Additional sheets of paper could be threaded between those

• 44:42Holly Frey?

  extra ribbons to create multiple copies of a typewritten document at once without the need for carbon paper. This is kind of fascinating because I, my understanding is that this took a long time because they had to figure out how it could work with basically any model of typewriter on the market at the time, which would be kind of tricky. The article even touted, quote, "According to those who are sponsoring the invention," I don't know who those were, "it would save the US government $16,000 a day, for the Pentagon must burn tons of carbon paper daily to keep information secret."

• 45:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was no small investment. The papers reported that Beulah's Protograph would go to market with a retail price of $69.50. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Inflation Calculator, that would be almost $900 in 2026. So a lot more than just a basic typewriter by itself.

• 45:40Holly Frey?

  Yeah, definitely another thing that she was marketing to businesses, not to home consumers. In 1962, Beulah came up with an idea that used the concept of how a percolator worked to create a baster that would keep meats moist as they roasted. That same year, she also patented a two-way envelope, which was featured in a New York Times story titled, "A Single Unit Serves for Mailing and Also Returning." And that article describes the mailer this way, quote, "The invention is a combination mailing and return envelope that can be manufactured in continuous strips and can be stuffed and addressed by machine.

• 46:21Holly Frey?

  Now that the patent is out, Ms. Henry expects to receive heavy orders from utility companies and stores that bill long lists of customers. The recipient tears off one flap, takes out his statement, inserts his check, pulls out another flap, and seals the envelope for remailing." That was Henry's 45th patent. In addition to that article, she was also interviewed for the New York Times for another write-up about it. And that was her last personal appearance and personal interview given for a large paper.

• 46:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Beulah Henry died on February 1, 1973, at the age of 85. At the time, she held more patents than any other woman and more than most male inventors did. That number of patents was 48, but she was posthumously granted a 49th. There are some newspaper mentions that state that she had more than 80 patents, but that appears to be how many inventions she said she had come up with, not how many patents she was awarded.

• 47:26Holly Frey?

  Yeah. And even that number changes from account to account. I've seen some that are north of 100. I'm not sure how any of that was tracked. I think most people were just going on whatever she said and they reported it as fact. In 2006, Beulah Henry was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

• 47:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1937, during a period when there was a lot of coverage of her in the press, a reporter asked her to make some predictions about the future, and they're pretty interesting and quite optimistic. So it seemed like a good place to end her story. That section of the paper, which is the Rock Island Argus from April 8 of 1937, reads, quote, "There will be an express highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific and an underground subway. There will be a tube under the ocean to travel from here to Europe. It will be suspended on a swinging cable. The point was made that this might make passengers more seasick than liners do. She dismissed that possibility. There will be a way to take care of that.

• 48:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  She envisions trains of the future mounted on rubber tires. Objection to the weight, objection that the weight of the trains couldn't be borne by the rubber tires makes her insist, a way will be found."

• 48:41Holly Frey?

  I feel like that was like her life ethos. A way will be found.

• 48:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Holly Frey?

  And that's Beulah Henry, who is fascinating to me. Very stylish, quite funny, very creative, sometimes even when you don't need the thing. That top is gonna haunt me in my dreams. But I have listener mail that is not haunting in the least. It is delightful and solves the thing that was not clear to me. This is from our listener, Tim, who writes, "Hi, Holly and Tracy. I was listening to your William Huxley episode and had a sudden realization when you read the passage about the bees entering his room and how he wished they had landed on his lips. I realized that must be where the word mellifluous comes from, which is a word I'm having trouble saying today, so apologies. I looked it up, and mellifluous

• 49:28Holly Frey?

  indeed means flowing with honey. A mellifluous voice belongs to someone who is honey-tongued or sweet-lipped. Interestingly, it has no connection to the word mellow. This explains why young William would have wanted the bees to land on his mouth. Just thought you'd like to know." I do like to know. That's brilliant. Thank you. For Pet Tax, I have attached a photo of Lita. She came to us with that name from the ARL, which I'm assuming is the Animal Rescue League, which we later adapted to Lita Lou and then Loube Lou. She happily answers to all three now. In the second picture, she's demonstrating how much she hates hugs, just like all dogs, or so they say. Then there's Little Lady Grey, looking a little grumpy in both pics. This is not her normal look. Incidentally, she's named after the

• 50:13Holly Frey?

  T rather than the nine-day queen. The second pic is the time she stowed away in the car and we didn't know until we were miles from home. Thanks for, and keep up the great work. Best regards, Tim." So Little Lita, it's not that little. She looks like maybe a border collie mix. Cute as pie. Super duper cute. Probably smarter than the rest of us put together. And of course, Little Lady Grey, as I have said recently on the show, has such a soft spot for a solid grey cat. Or any cat, really, but I really do like solid grey cats a lot. So thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your babies with us and for solving that puzzle for me.

• 50:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 50:52Holly Frey?

  Because I didn't, that would never have occurred to me in a million, billion, bazillion years. I would not have landed there. So thank you for filling that gap that I could not. Sure appreciate it, Tim. If you would like to write to us and solve any questions that I can't seem to figure out on my own, maybe that flagpole thing, it'd be great if you got a way that's figured out. You can do that at [email protected]. You can also find the show notes for all of our episodes at missedinhistory.com. Click on any episode and you'll see all of the things we used for reference for it. If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, you could do so on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

• 51:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:52Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 52:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide,

• 53:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 53:12Speaker 05

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't chew needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and

• 53:54Speaker 05

  call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 54:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Hola a todos. Soy Jamie Lynn Sigler. Cuando me diagnosticaron tenía veintitantos años y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas. Y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones, la elección para mí fue obvia. Boom! Eso es KISSIMTA. Obtenga más información sobre KISSIMTA o fotumab en kissimta.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.