Born: 1836 (circa), United States
Died: 1904
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Maria Hauser
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
American inventor Maria Beasley successfully marketed at least fifteen of her own inventions, ranging from a foot-warmer to a device that kept trains from derailing. Financially, her greatest accomplishment was a barrel-making machine that earned her an income of about $20,000 a year, when most working women of the time earned only $3 per day. In 1880, she produced a much-improved life raft— previously, emergency rafts were simply planks with hollow floats. Beasley designed hers to be “fire-proof, compact, safe, and readily launched.” She changed the style of the floats, so that her rafts could be folded for storage but quickly unfolded in an emergency, complete with guard rails. Yet despite her achievements, Beasley’s occupation in the 1880 U.S. Census was “unemployed housewife.”