Switching it On

I haven't blogged much recently.  I've been grumpy. I've not eaten enough vegetables, moved enough, I've watched too much TV and I'm reading a book that I'm not enjoying. Twitter is bonkers and although it is still making me laugh, reading Donald Trump and Vincente Fox Quesado's tweets are making me feel a little uneasy.  The idea of Wikileaks publishing the personal details of anyone with a blue tick (including their family) is terrifying me, so much so that I suggested that my daughter might want to refuse her pending verification and I spent one early waking morning deleting any Facebook profile picture that I wouldn't want to be used if I was murdered. (I left the pictures of cheese.)

I've been trying not to inflict my grumpiness on the rest of the world but this week something has really bothered me.  I was teaching a song on SingUp called Switching it On, about the invention of the lightbulb.  It's a great song with two part harmony and is perfect for a Victorian Topic.

The lyrics are:

On a dark and stormy night,

Ben Franklin flew a kite.To the tail he tied a metal key —Now it wasn’t down to luck,He was sure when lightning struckThat he’d shown the world e-lec-tric-i-tee.
Of course he didn’t think one day he’d switch it on, 
Of course he didn’t count on Volta, Mather and Swan,
Of course he didn’t count on Thomas Edison,
Thomas Edison —

I knew about Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan and I had heard of volts, so thought that Volta might have invented the battery but I'd never heard of Mather.  I googled "Mather," and the top results were a law firm, an architect and an engineering company.  "Mather light," took me to a light railway in Sacramento.  I checked SingUp's teaching notes, which told me to pick out the inventors' names and discuss what each one did.  Luckily, they gave their first names, so I googled "Sarah Mather," and found Eminem's half sister and a singer from American Idol.  I was beginning to think that this was SingUp's little joke, to see which teachers were paying attention but "Sarah Mather inventor," gave some answers.  

On April 16th 1845 Sarah Mather submitted a patent for an submarine telescope with a lamp attached.  It was designed for examining the hull of a boat from above the water but in her patent she thought it would have various uses, the lamp being used to light items for inspection under water.  No website knew anything about her, as a person.

I was stunned. Why do women get written out of history? 

The children just shrugged when I said that I could find lots of information about the men but none about the woman.  They weren't as horrified as I had been.  

"Would you like to see pictures of these people?" I asked.

They all agreed that it helps to see a picture of someone.  They suggested that Joseph Swan should have invented the electric razor or better still a lawnmower and asked, "How does someone grow a beard like that?"

When they saw a picture of Sarah Mather there was a stunned gasp.

"Oh, she's quite pretty, actually."

It was my turn to gasp.  Equality is such a long way off if the next generation can only see a woman's worth in terms of how she looks.