Martha Jane Hunt Coston (1826-1904)
She was a pretty woman, but what's of a more enduring value is that she also was quite brilliant as well as very, very resilient. As she had eloped with and married extremely early - she was no more than 15 or 16 - she was the mother of four children when she became a widow at 21 years of age. Her husband, Benjamin Franklin Coston, had been an inventor who sadly died from an accident when working with chemical gasses. Not an easy situation for a young woman in a bigoted and Patriarchal society. However, not succumbing to despondency, she decided to start working on the ambitious project of her late husband, namely a color-coded flare system. She had his initial notes, but only a limited knowledge of chemistry and pyrotechnics, so she had to rely on the advice of hired chemists and fireworks experts. As was to be expected, the results were mixed, and she may have become very frustrated by the experience. If so, that didn't stop her, as she worked on the development of the project for nearly ten years.
She had what proved to be a breakthrough in 1858 when witnessing the fireworks display in New York City celebrating the completion of the transatlantic telegraph cable, she realized something very important: Her system needed a bright blue flare, to go along with the red and white she had already developed. To achieve that, she established the Coston Manufacturing Company for manufacturing the signal flares. A business relationship with a pyrotechnics developer made it possible for her to develop the blue color she needed for her project, and in 1859 she was granted U.S. Patent No. 23,536 for a pyrotechnic night signal and code system, but only as the administrator of the work of her late husband: He was named as the inventor, although she was the one who had developed the system.
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Not until 1871 did she obtain a patent in her own name: Patent Number 115,935 for "Improvement in Pyrotechnic Night Signals". That must have been a wonderful victory for her, but nevertheless, she had to press claims from the American government. Her estimate was that they owed her $120,000 in compensation for having to supply them for less than the cost of the flares, and I suppose she may have been cheated by them. For ten years she claimed an additional payment, but ended up only being offered $15,000. I suspect that that part of it was a question of gender, but I'm not sure-sure ....
No matter what, her maritime signal flare system revolutionized naval communication, thus saved countless lives at sea: Eventually every station of the United States Life-Saving Service had Coston flares.
https://www.militarytrader.com/tag/martha-coston
https://fee.org/articles/3-pioneering-women-in-american-business/
Wikipedia
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