Black Women Inventors

An excerpt From Black Enterprises - 

Black Women Inventors Hold These Historic Patents

Black women remain resilient and continue to offer creative, impactful inventions.

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Marian Croak, born May 14, 1955, is an engineer noted for her contribution to the development of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology that digital signals for internet transmission convert voice data into. In 2009, she was granted U.S. Patent No. 7,599,359 for her contributions in this area regarding audio and video conferencing. Croak started at Bell Labs in 1982, where she worked on network engineering and digital telecommunications. She also created a text-to-donate system that raised millions of dollars during disasters. In 2014, Croak joined Google to lead the company’s Research Center for Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology. Croak, who has more than 200 patents, works to advance racial justice and encourages young women and girls to engage in engineering.

 

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Born in Queens, New York, in 1922, Marie Van Brittan Brown invented the first home security system and was the first to use closed circuit television surveillance systems outside of a business. A resident of a neighborhood with high crime rates and a slow police response, she created a system in 1966 with peep holes, a sliding camera, monitors, a two-way microphone, and an alarm button to call the police. She received her grant of U.S. Patent No. 3,482,037 for her creation on December 2, 1969. Her invention marked the beginning of modern security technology and remains a vital part of home and business security systems today.

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Dr. Patricia Bath, born in Harlem, New York, on November 4, 1942, invented the Laserphaco Probe, a device that enhanced the speed and accuracy of cataract removal. She became the first Black woman physician to receive a medical patent in 1988 (U.S. Patent No. 4,744,360). A trailblazer in ophthalmology, she was the first Black woman to complete an ophthalmology residency at New York University and the first woman to lead an ophthalmology residency program in the United States at Drew UCLA. She had a commitment to increase access to eye care, co-founding the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in 1976. A laser surgery and vision care expert, she was recognized for her contributions and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2022. She died on May 30, 2019.

https://www.blackenterprise.com/10-patents-created-by-black-women-inventors/