As many of you may know, March is National Women’s History month in the United States. As part of that celebration, ATS will be doing some special posts here on our blog in honor of engineering women in history!  Our first profile is on Helen Augusta Blanchard.
Helen was born in Maine in 1840.  While she had always been engineering minded and inventive, it wasn’t until her family lost her fortune that she started to shine (isn’t that always the way in engineering? The constraints of the problem cause the creativity to soar).   She receieved her first patent in 1873 for inventing the zig-zag stitch sewing machine.  Her engineering talent served her well as she went on to patent a pencil sharpener, further improvements to the sewing machine, elastic seams for clothing and gores for shoes. Overall, she earned 28 patents in her historic engineering career!