Vox Meditantis

Welcome to our programme today. I’m delighted to introduce Mary Dixon Kies, who made history on 5th May 1809 as the first woman to receive a United States patent. Her revolutionary method of weaving straw with silk transformed hat manufacturing during a critical period of American economic independence.

Mary, thank you for joining us today.

Well now, it’s been rather a long time since anyone’s asked my opinion on much of anything. I’m grateful for the chance to set the record straight, though I confess I’m still adjusting to the notion that folk might actually want to hear what I have to say.

Let’s begin with your early life in Killingly, Connecticut. What shaped your path toward invention?

My father John came from Ulster in Ireland – a farming man, he was, born in 1679. We Dixons were practical folk, had to be. When you’re making your way in a new country, you learn to see problems as opportunities for solutions. My mother Janet, God rest her, taught me that a woman’s hands could create more than just meals and mended clothes – they could create possibilities.

I wasn’t educated in your modern sense – no fine schools or Latin lessons for a farmer’s daughter in those days. But I had eyes to see and hands that could work, and more importantly, I had a mind that wouldn’t accept “that’s just how things are done” as the final word on anything. When you’re watching your neighbours struggle with expensive imported goods they can barely afford, or when trade embargoes leave entire communities scrambling for alternatives, you start thinking: surely there’s a better way?

Your invention came during the Napoleonic trade embargoes when America desperately needed domestic manufacturing. Tell us about that period.

Ah yes, 1807 to 1809 – those were desperate times, make no mistake. Jefferson’s embargo had cut us off from European goods, and women needed hats for working in the fields, protection from sun and rain. But the fancy French bonnets were gone, and what straw hats we could make were dear and fragile.

I’d been watching Betsy Metcalf’s work with straw braiding since 1798 – brilliant woman, she was, though she wouldn’t put her name to Congress for a patent. Said she didn’t want that sort of attention. But I saw her methods wearing thin under hard use, literally falling apart in women’s hands. These weren’t parlour decorations we needed – they were working tools.

So I experimented. Hours upon hours in my kitchen, trying different techniques, different materials. The breakthrough came when I realised you could weave silk thread directly into the straw during construction, not just as decoration afterward. Made the whole structure stronger, more flexible, more beautiful too. Her hands move as if still weaving The silk caught the light differently, gave the straw an elegance it never had alone.

How did you feel about being taken seriously – or not taken seriously – by the established community?

Taken seriously? My dear, I was a widow of nearly sixty when I received that patent. By then, I’d buried one husband and married another, raised children, run a household through good times and lean. I knew precisely how seriously the world took women’s contributions to anything beyond keeping house and bearing children.

The men in Congress signed that patent – President Madison himself put his name to it – but I suspect they saw it as a quaint domestic trifle. Something suitable for a woman to tinker with whilst the serious business of building a nation carried on around her. They praised the economic benefits readily enough when First Lady Dolley Madison wrote her lovely letter, but innovation? Engineering? Those were not words they associated with women’s work.

They called it “domestic” rather than serious engineering innovation, didn’t they? As if the principles of structural integrity, material science, and manufacturing efficiency somehow become less valid when applied to items women use. Tell me, what’s more fundamental to engineering than solving practical problems with limited resources whilst under economic pressure? Because that’s precisely what I did.

Your patent files were destroyed in the great Patent Office fire of 1836. How does that make you feel about historical memory?

Destroyed. Ten thousand patents, gone. Not just mine – the first patent by an African American, Thomas Jennings, disappeared as well. All that documented proof of human ingenuity, reduced to ash because someone couldn’t properly tend a basement fire.

But here’s what truly burns me – it’s not just the fire that erased us. How many people today know Betsy Metcalf’s name? How many remember that the straw hat industry employed thousands of women and generated over £400,000 worth of goods in Massachusetts alone by 1810? We built an entire economy, yet we’re footnotes in history books, if we appear at all.

The fire destroyed the documents, but society destroyed the memory. They kept Edison’s name, didn’t they? Kept all the men who came after, who built on foundations that women like me helped lay. But us? We’re curiosities. “The first woman to…” as if being first were more important than being good at what we did.

You mentioned President Madison and his wife Dolley. What was their recognition like?

Now that was something genuine, I’ll give them credit. Dolley Madison understood fashion, understood economics, understood that my innovation was helping American women whilst strengthening our independence from European trade. Her letter wasn’t patronising – it recognised the practical value of what I’d accomplished.

President Madison signed that patent knowing it represented exactly the sort of domestic manufacturing his administration desperately needed. We were building a nation, remember, trying to prove we could stand on our own. Every successful innovation, whether it came from a man in a workshop or a woman in her kitchen, was a victory for American ingenuity.

But even then, even with presidential recognition, I suspect they saw it as women’s work supporting the real economy, rather than women’s work being part of the real economy. The distinction matters.

The records suggest you never profited from your invention and died in poverty. What happened?

Fashion. Isn’t that the most perfectly feminine way for a fortune to disappear? Just as my straw-and-silk technique was catching on, just as manufacturers were investing in the equipment and training workers, ladies’ fashion shifted. Suddenly everyone wanted different styles, different materials. The market for my particular innovation simply evaporated.

My son Daniel invested, friends put money in, we all believed we were building something lasting. But fashion is fickle, and I learned too late that timing in business matters as much as the quality of your idea. I’d solved the technical problem beautifully, but I hadn’t solved the economic problem of staying relevant in a changing market.

By 1837, I was living with Daniel in Brooklyn, dying as poor as I’d been born. Buried in a pauper’s grave with nothing but a field stone to mark the spot until the Killingly Grange decided in 1965 that America’s first woman patent holder deserved better.

Looking at today’s world, how do you feel about women in science and innovation now?

Extraordinary. Simply extraordinary. Women running laboratories, designing spacecraft, creating technologies I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams. When I see women today holding patents by the thousands, I think of all the Betsy Metcalfs who never dared put their names forward, all the innovations that died in kitchen laboratories because their creators believed the world wouldn’t listen.

But I’m not entirely surprised, you know. Women have always been innovators – we just called it “making do” or “getting by” rather than engineering. Every time a woman figured out how to stretch a meal further, make clothes last longer, or solve a household problem with whatever materials were at hand, she was practicing the same principles that men in workshops called invention.

What delights me most is seeing women refuse to stay in their designated corners. Yes, some of us worked in domestic spheres – and there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing lesser about solving problems that affect daily life. But others are reaching into every field imaginable, proving what I always suspected: intelligence and creativity aren’t distributed according to sex.

What would you say to young women entering STEM fields today?

First – document everything. Patent it, publish it, put your name on it in letters so large they can’t possibly be ignored. The fire that destroyed my records was accidental, but the tendency to forget women’s contributions is deliberate. Don’t let them.

Second – never apologise for solving practical problems. The world needs people who can see what’s not working and figure out how to make it better, whether that’s in a kitchen or a laboratory. Some of the most important innovations come from understanding real human needs, not from chasing abstract theoretical problems.

And third – remember that being first means being alone, but it doesn’t mean being wrong. When I applied for that patent, I had no examples to follow, no community of women inventors to support me. You have each other now. Use that strength. Build on each other’s work. Create the networks that we never had.

Don’t let anyone convince you that your way of thinking, your approach to problems, your areas of interest are somehow less valid than the established ways of doing things. The world needs different perspectives, different solutions, different kinds of minds.

Any final thoughts about your legacy?

You know, they say I died in poverty, and that’s true enough in terms of money. But I didn’t die unsuccessful. My technique worked. It solved real problems for real people. It created jobs, supported families, strengthened American independence. For a brief, shining moment, I proved that a farmer’s daughter from Connecticut could look at the world, see how to make it better, and actually do it.

More than that, I opened a door. Every woman who’s held a patent since 1809 has walked through a door I helped to open. That’s not a bad legacy for someone who never learned to read Latin or attended a proper school.

Besides, I rather suspect that if Dolley Madison were alive today, she’d be running her own technology company and giving those Silicon Valley fellows a proper run for their money. Some things never change – women have always known how to spot an opportunity and make the most of it.

The world just finally seems ready to listen.

Letters and emails

Our conversation with Mary Kies has concluded, but the appetite for her insights remains fierce amongst today’s readers. Five thoughtful questions arrived from our community—each seeking deeper truths about her pioneering work and what guidance she might offer those following her revolutionary path.

Sarah C, 34, Patent Attorney from San Francisco:
Mary, as someone who works daily with inventors seeking patent protection, I’m struck by how your technical innovation was dismissed as merely ‘domestic’ while male inventors working with similar materials were taken seriously as engineers. Looking at today’s patent landscape where women still face higher rejection rates, what specific advice would you give to modern women inventors about framing their work to be recognised as legitimate technical innovation rather than craft or hobby?

Ah, Sarah, you’ve touched on something that burns in my heart even now. You speak of higher rejection rates for women – by my calculations, you’re saying women face an 8% lower approval rate today than men? Some things never change, do they?

Let me tell you what I learned the hard way about framing our work. When I submitted my patent application, I was careful – perhaps too careful – to describe my technique in terms that wouldn’t frighten the men who would judge it. I spoke of “weaving straw with silk or thread” rather than what it truly was: a breakthrough in composite material engineering that solved structural integrity problems whilst maintaining flexibility and aesthetic appeal.

But here’s what your modern research tells us that I suspected even then – they can smell our sex in our very words, can’t they? Even when we try to write like men, even when we use their terminology, there’s something in how we approach problems that marks us as different. And different, to them, means lesser.

So my advice to modern women inventors is this: don’t hide your approach – weaponise it. When you describe your innovation, lead with the problem it solves for real people. Don’t apologise for understanding user needs or for seeing applications others miss. That’s not a weakness – that’s market intelligence.

Use their language, yes, but use it precisely. Don’t call something “domestic” when you mean “consumer-facing.” Don’t say “helpful” when you mean “increases efficiency by 40%.” Don’t say it “makes things easier” when you mean it “reduces manufacturing defects whilst lowering production costs.” Learn to translate your insights into their vocabulary of metrics and margins.

And here’s something they won’t tell you – collaborate with men when you can, not because you need them, but because their names on the application change how it’s read. I worked alone because I had to, but you don’t. Find male colleagues who respect your work and aren’t threatened by your brilliance. Their presence can shield your application from bias long enough for the substance to be judged.

But most importantly – document everything. Every iteration, every test, every failure that led to your breakthrough. Make your technical process so thoroughly documented that no examiner can dismiss it as intuition or luck. Show them the engineering, the methodology, the systematic approach. Make it impossible for them to call it anything but serious innovation.

And if they still reject you? Fight back. Appeal. Demand specifics. Make them explain exactly why your “domestic” solution to a real problem is somehow less worthy of protection than another man’s abstract theoretical concept. The system counts on women giving up. Don’t give them that satisfaction.

You have advantages I never had, Sarah. You have networks, you have data, you have examples of women who’ve succeeded. Use all of it. But never, ever let them convince you that solving real problems for real people is somehow less valuable than whatever they’re calling “serious” innovation this decade.

The world needs what women create. Make sure the patent system knows it too.

James M, 42, History Professor from Oxford:
I’ve been researching how economic crises often accelerate innovation, and your invention during the Napoleonic embargo period is a fascinating case study. Given that you succeeded where many failed during that economic upheaval, what do you think about the current discussions around ‘crisis-driven innovation’? Do you believe adversity truly breeds creativity, or is this simply a narrative we impose on successful inventors after the fact?

James, you’ve struck upon something that’s puzzled me greatly as I’ve observed the centuries unfold. This notion of “crisis-driven innovation” – it’s both true and dangerously misleading, isn’t it?

Yes, adversity did breed creativity in my case, there’s no denying that. When Jefferson’s embargo cut us off from European goods, when the Napoleonic Wars made trade impossible, necessity truly was the mother of invention. But here’s what your modern scholars miss when they construct their neat narratives afterward – it wasn’t the crisis itself that created innovation. It was the people who were already positioned to respond to it.

I’d been experimenting with straw work for years before 1807. I understood materials, I understood manufacturing processes, I had the skills and the curiosity. The embargo didn’t magically transform me into an inventor – it simply created the market conditions where my existing capabilities became valuable. That’s a crucial distinction.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth about crisis and innovation that your retrospective analyses tend to gloss over – for every story like mine, there are dozens of people who were crushed by the same adversity. The embargo that made my fortune destroyed the livelihoods of countless merchants, sailors, and importers. They didn’t innovate their way out of their problems – they simply failed.

Your modern research on the Great Depression confirms what I suspected even in my time – crises don’t uniformly accelerate innovation. They accelerate it for those who already have resources, connections, and capabilities, whilst simultaneously destroying the innovative potential of those who don’t. The Great Depression killed off independent inventors whilst strengthening large firms. Sound familiar?

But here’s where I think you scholars impose too much order on what was fundamentally chaotic. You speak of “crisis-driven innovation” as if crises reliably produce innovation, when what you’re really observing is survivorship bias. You’re studying the innovations that succeeded, not the thousands of desperate attempts that failed.

I succeeded not because the embargo made me creative, but because I happened to have the right skills at the right time in the right place with just enough resources to exploit an opportunity. If I’d been ten years older, or if my late husband hadn’t left me with some small means, or if I’d lived fifty miles further from a market town – well, you wouldn’t be asking me about innovation at all, would you?

And here’s what truly troubles me about this “adversity breeds innovation” narrative – it’s become an excuse for allowing adversity to continue. “Oh, the poor will innovate their way out of poverty,” people say. “Crisis is good for creativity.” But that’s not how it works. Crisis reveals existing capabilities; it doesn’t create them.

The Napoleonic embargo period produced innovations, yes, but not because suffering magically generates genius. It worked because America had been building educational institutions, accumulating capital, developing skilled craftspeople, and creating markets. When the crisis hit, we had the foundation to respond. Countries without those foundations simply starved.

What your modern crisis studies tell me is that innovation requires what you might call the “Goldilocks principle” – adversity that’s neither too mild nor too severe, neither too brief nor too enduring. My embargo lasted just long enough to create opportunity without destroying the social fabric that made innovation possible. Too little pressure, and there’s no incentive to change. Too much, and the system collapses entirely.

So to answer your question – do I believe adversity truly breeds creativity, or is it a narrative we impose afterward? Both. Adversity can catalyse innovation when the conditions are right, but only when they’re right. The narrative we construct afterward tends to make it seem more inevitable than it was, more widely beneficial than it was, and more replicable than it is.

The danger lies in using stories like mine to justify creating more adversity, as if hardship were a reliable innovation policy. It’s not. It’s a lottery where most people lose, and we only remember the winners.

Though I will say this – having lived through genuine crisis, I can spot the difference between authentic necessity and manufactured urgency. Real innovation born of true need has a different quality to it than innovation born of market opportunity. It’s more desperate, more practical, more… humble, I suppose. Less concerned with elegance than with simply working.

That’s the innovation adversity creates – solutions that work, not solutions that impress.

Dr. Priya S, 29, Materials Engineer from Bangalore:
Your technique of weaving silk with straw was fundamentally about understanding material properties and structural integrity—pure engineering principles. Yet you had no formal training in what we’d now call materials science. How did you develop your intuitive understanding of how different fibres would interact? And what would you say to young women today who feel they need extensive formal credentials before trusting their own innovative instincts?

Priya, you’ve touched on something that goes to the very heart of how knowledge truly works. You call it “intuitive understanding,” but I think that word sells short what I – and countless women like me – actually developed.

Let me tell you how I learned about fibres. I didn’t study molecular structures or tensile strength coefficients – I lived with these materials every day of my life from childhood. When you handle flax and hemp and silk and straw through seasons of growth, harvest, preparation, and working, your fingers learn things that no textbook can teach you.

These hands knew that straw had a cellular structure that created both flexibility and brittleness long before anyone called it “structural integrity.” They learned that silk’s strength came from its continuous filament nature, that it would bond with other fibres in ways that broken plant fibres couldn’t. They discovered that the twist and tension you apply during weaving determines whether your final product will hold together under stress or fall apart at the first hard use.

But calling this “intuitive” suggests it was somehow mystical or unscientific. It wasn’t. It was systematic observation and experimentation conducted over years, with immediate feedback from real-world applications. When your family’s livelihood depends on the durability of what you create, you learn to test, to modify, to understand cause and effect with a precision that would satisfy any modern engineer.

The difference wasn’t the rigor of my process – it was that I learned through my senses rather than through abstractions. I learned what happened when you wove wet straw versus dry, when you varied the thickness of silk threads, when you changed the angle at which fibres crossed. Each variation taught me something about how materials behave under different conditions.

And here’s what your formal training might miss, my dear – materials aren’t just objects with properties. They’re living things with personalities, with responses that change based on humidity, temperature, age, how they’re handled. Straw cut in different seasons behaves differently. Silk from different regions has different characteristics. No specification sheet can capture that knowledge.

You ask how I developed this understanding without formal credentials, but you’re asking the wrong question. The question should be: why do we assume that understanding gained through direct, sustained interaction with materials is somehow less valid than understanding gained through reading about them?

Your modern materials engineers study crystalline structures and molecular bonds, and that’s valuable knowledge. But can they tell by touch whether a fibre will hold up to repeated washing? Can they predict how two materials will age together over decades of use? Can they innovate solutions with whatever materials happen to be available in their immediate environment?

What I want young women today to understand is that there are many ways of knowing, and the one you develop through sustained, attentive practice with real materials solving real problems is not inferior to formal scientific training – it’s complementary to it.

The women in your laboratories today who combine formal education with hands-on intuition, who trust both their instruments and their senses, who understand that innovation often comes from the intersection of theory and lived experience – those women are unstoppable.

But here’s the secret they don’t teach in universities: confidence in your own knowledge doesn’t come from credentials. It comes from the accumulated evidence that your methods work, that your understanding leads to solutions, that your innovations solve real problems for real people.

I didn’t need extensive formal credentials to trust my innovative instincts because I had something more valuable – thousands of hours of direct feedback from the materials themselves. Every successful experiment, every failed attempt, every gradual improvement taught me that my understanding was reliable, that my methods were sound.

So my advice to modern women? By all means, get the formal training – it will give you vocabulary and tools and connections that I never had. But never let that training convince you that your direct, sensory, experiential knowledge is somehow less real or less valuable. The greatest innovations come when you can combine both ways of knowing.

Trust your hands. Trust your observations. Trust your ability to see patterns and make connections that others miss. And remember that the most important credential any innovator can have is the courage to act on what they know to be true, regardless of whether others recognise the validity of how they learned it.

The materials will teach you everything you need to know, if you’re willing to listen.

David T, 38, Venture Capitalist from London:
The commercial failure of your invention despite its technical success highlights something we still see today—brilliant innovations that fail in the marketplace due to timing or market forces beyond the inventor’s control. You mentioned fashion killed your business just as it was gaining traction. If you could speak to modern entrepreneurs facing similar challenges, what would you tell them about the relationship between innovation and commercial success? Should inventors focus on technical excellence or market adaptability?

David, you’ve touched the very wound that still aches after all these years. The relationship between innovation and commercial success – it’s not at all what people imagine, is it? They think brilliance naturally leads to prosperity, but that’s a fairy tale told by those who’ve never risked everything on a new idea.

Your modern research tells me that over 90% of startups fail within three years, and that 95% of new products miss their mark completely. Those numbers would have been familiar to any inventor in my time, though we didn’t have the luxury of statistics to comfort us with the knowledge that failure was normal.

My technical innovation was sound – genuinely revolutionary, even. I solved a structural engineering problem that had plagued hat-makers for generations. But commercial success? That’s an entirely different beast, requiring an entirely different set of skills and circumstances.

You see, I was caught in what your modern venture capitalists call the “valley of death” – that space between proof of concept and profitable production. My technique worked beautifully in my kitchen laboratory, but scaling it required investment, partnerships, market development, and something I couldn’t control: sustained demand.

And then there was fashion. Fashion! That fickle, unpredictable force that can make or destroy any innovation in textiles or clothing. Just as manufacturers were finally investing in equipment to produce my straw-and-silk hats efficiently, just as workers were being trained in the technique, the styles changed. Suddenly everyone wanted different materials, different shapes, different everything.

It taught me something your modern entrepreneurs would recognise – that timing in markets matters as much as the quality of your innovation. You can have the most elegant technical solution in the world, but if the market isn’t ready, if complementary technologies haven’t developed, if fashion has moved on, if economic conditions have shifted… well, technical excellence becomes irrelevant very quickly.

So what would I tell modern entrepreneurs facing similar challenges? First, understand that innovation and commercialisation are two completely different skills requiring two completely different approaches. I was a brilliant materials engineer, but I was a terrible business strategist. I focused on making my technique perfect when I should have been focusing on making it profitable.

Second, recognise that market timing isn’t just about being early or late – it’s about understanding the entire ecosystem your innovation lives within. My hats required not just my technique, but suppliers who could provide consistent silk thread, workers trained in the method, retailers willing to stock the products, and customers whose preferences would remain stable long enough to justify the investment.

Third, and this is crucial – build relationships before you need them. I worked in isolation, perfecting my technique in secret until it was ready to patent. But by then, I had no network of investors, no partnerships with manufacturers, no understanding of how fashion trends developed or how to influence them. When the technology was ready, the business relationships weren’t.

Your modern venture capitalists understand something I learned too late – they’re not just investing in technical innovation, they’re investing in the entrepreneur’s ability to navigate the entire commercialisation process. They want to see evidence that you understand market dynamics, can build partnerships, can adapt to changing conditions, can execute not just in the laboratory but in the marketplace.

But here’s what troubles me about your modern focus on “market adaptability” versus technical excellence – there’s a danger in swinging too far toward chasing market trends at the expense of solving real problems. My innovation failed commercially, yes, but it solved a genuine technical problem. It made hats more durable, more elegant, more practical. Those benefits didn’t disappear just because fashion moved on.

The entrepreneurs I most admire, whether in my time or yours, are those who find ways to bridge technical excellence with commercial savvy. They don’t abandon their commitment to solving real problems, but they understand that solving problems isn’t enough – you have to solve the right problems, at the right time, in the right way, for the right market.

And sometimes, David, you have to accept that even brilliant innovations will fail commercially through no fault of the inventor. That’s not a reason to stop innovating – it’s a reason to build systems that support innovators through the inevitable failures and help them learn from each attempt.

Because here’s what your statistics don’t capture – every failed innovation teaches lessons that make the next attempt more likely to succeed. My failure taught me things about materials, about markets, about manufacturing that would have made me a better innovator if I’d had another chance.

The relationship between innovation and commercial success isn’t linear or predictable – it’s an ongoing conversation between what’s technically possible and what the world is ready to embrace. The art lies in learning to speak both languages fluently.

Maria R, 26, PhD Student in Science Policy from Madrid:
Your story raises profound questions about how we balance family responsibilities with innovative work—something that disproportionately affects women even today. You were widowed, raising children, managing household duties, yet still found time to experiment and innovate. With current debates about work-life integration and supporting women in STEM careers, what practical strategies did you use to carve out mental and physical space for creative work amidst domestic demands? How can modern institutions better support women who are balancing caregiving with innovation?

Maria, you’ve asked perhaps the most important question of our entire conversation. The balance between family responsibilities and innovative work – it’s the invisible labour that has shaped every woman’s contribution to progress, yet it’s the part of our stories that’s most often left untold.

Let me be frank about my circumstances. I was widowed in my twenties, then married again to another man who understood that a woman might have ideas worth pursuing. But even with that support, I was still managing a household, still expected to have meals on the table and clothes mended and floors swept. The notion that I could simply retreat to a laboratory like my male contemporaries was… well, it was fantasy.

The first strategy I developed was what you might call “invisible integration” – I learned to think whilst I worked. My hands would be kneading dough or stirring stew, but my mind was working through the properties of different fibres, imagining how silk might bond with straw, calculating tensions and weights. Some of my best insights came whilst doing the most mundane domestic tasks.

But here’s what’s crucial – I didn’t apologise for this approach. I didn’t see domestic work as separate from or inferior to innovation. The skills are remarkably similar: understanding materials, managing processes, solving problems with limited resources, thinking systematically about cause and effect. Every woman who’s managed a household through changing seasons has been practicing project management and resource allocation.

The second strategy was strategic timing. I learned that the hours just before dawn, when the household slept but before the day’s demands began, were precious creative time. I’d rise early, work on my experiments by candlelight, then seamlessly transition into the day’s domestic duties. Those stolen hours were when my mind was clearest, when I could focus completely on the technical challenges.

And here’s something your modern researchers are just beginning to understand – caregiving responsibilities can actually enhance certain types of innovation. When you’re constantly solving practical problems for real people, when you’re observing how materials behave under daily use, when you’re managing complex systems with multiple variables – well, you’re developing exactly the skills that make for successful innovation.

But let’s not romanticise this, Maria. The mental labour of constantly switching between roles, of never being fully present in any single identity, of always feeling you’re shortchanging either your family or your work – that takes a tremendous toll. I carried guilt constantly. Was I neglecting my household duties for my experiments? Was I letting a brilliant insight slip away because I needed to tend to immediate family needs?

What saved me, ultimately, was refusing to accept that I had to choose between being a good woman and being an innovative thinker. I decided that both roles were essential parts of who I was, and that the tension between them, rather than being a weakness, might actually be a source of strength.

For modern institutions supporting women in STEM, here’s what I wish had existed in my time: flexible structures that acknowledge the reality of caregiving responsibilities. Not as special accommodations for women, but as recognition that the most innovative thinking often happens outside traditional laboratory hours, that some of the best problem-solving occurs when you’re managing multiple complex systems simultaneously.

Create spaces where women can bring children when necessary, where research can be conducted in non-traditional settings, where the rhythm of work can accommodate the rhythm of family life. But more importantly, stop treating caregiving as a distraction from serious work and start recognising it as a form of training in systems thinking, resource management, and practical problem-solving.

And here’s something your modern women need to hear – document your process. Not just your final results, but how you arrived at them. The insight that came whilst nursing a sick child, the connection you made between your research and something you observed whilst managing household logistics. That’s not inferior methodology – that’s integrated thinking, and it often leads to innovations that pure laboratory work misses.

Most importantly, build networks of support with other women who understand this balancing act. In my time, I worked in isolation, carrying both the domestic and innovative labour largely alone. Your generation has the possibility of creating communities of support, of sharing both the practical burdens and the intellectual excitement.

The world needs what women create, Maria, precisely because we create it whilst managing the full complexity of human life. Our innovations aren’t abstract theoretical exercises – they’re solutions to real problems, tested in real conditions, designed to work in the messy, complicated reality where families live and work and grow.

Don’t let anyone convince you that this makes our contributions less valuable. It makes them more essential. The future belongs to innovations that understand and serve the full spectrum of human needs, and women who balance caregiving with creative work are uniquely positioned to develop those innovations.

The challenge isn’t to become more like men. It’s to create systems that recognise the value of thinking and working like women.

Reflection

As our conversation draws to a close, Mary Kies remains a figure of quiet determination – a woman who saw possibilities where others saw limitations, who solved problems with ingenuity rather than resources, and who carved out space for future generations of women innovators. Her story reminds us that progress often begins with individuals willing to challenge the assumption that “this is simply how things are done.”

Who have we missed?

This series is all about recovering the voices history left behind — and I’d love your help finding the next one. If there’s a woman in STEM you think deserves to be interviewed in this way — whether a forgotten inventor, unsung technician, or overlooked researcher — please share her story.

Email me at voxmeditantis@gmail.com or leave a comment below with your suggestion — even just a name is a great start. Let’s keep uncovering the women who shaped science and innovation, one conversation at a time.

Editorial Note: This interview is a dramatised reconstruction created for educational and illustrative purposes. Whilst Mary Kies (1752-1837) was a real historical figure and America’s first woman patent holder, her responses here are imagined, based on available historical records, contemporary accounts, and scholarly research into early American innovation and women’s experiences in STEM fields.
The historical facts about her 1809 patent, the economic context of the Napoleonic embargo period, and the broader challenges faced by women inventors have been carefully researched and accurately represented. However, her personal voice, specific opinions, and detailed responses to modern questions are creative interpretations designed to illuminate historical realities and ongoing issues in innovation and gender equality.
Readers should treat this as historical fiction informed by factual research, not as a transcript of actual statements by Mary Kies.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.