DON'T LAUGH! (Okay, laugh if you must...)
Marjorie Joyner's 1928 Permanent Wave Machine (Patent #1,693,515) lifted the granddaughter of a slave into a position as national manager of a chain of beauty schools. Hear this story and many more in Ethlie Ann Vare's inspiring presentation: MOTHERS OF INVENTION.

Do you know that many of our most useful and enjoyable products were invented by women? We have women to thank for Liquid Paper and Scotchgard, disposable diapers and dishwashers, chocolate chip cookies and TV dinners, the Barbie Doll, the hang glider, and the atomic bomb!

Ethlie Ann Vare, co-author of Patently Female: From AZT to TV Dinners, Stories of Women Inventors and their Breakthrough Ideas, presents an entertaining and eye-opening account of the "hidden" women behind familiar products, discoveries and innovations. Vare demonstrates conclusively that women have been inventing and discovering since the beginning of time, from mundane but useful things like drip coffee and the windshield wiper to transforming inventions like COBOL computer language and the cellular phone.

Ms. Vare also co-authored the award-winning Mothers of Invention: From the Bra to the Bomb, Forgotten Women and their Unforgettable Ideas, and wrote the young people's biography Adventurous Spirit: A Story About Ellen Swallow Richards. She is also familiar as a broadcast journalist from her years on the E! Channel, and has written and produced such popular television shows as Silk Stalkings, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda and the hit CBS series CSI.