Sarah Boone was an inventor who is best known for the improvements which she made to the ironing board. Sarah was one of the first African American women to receive a patent in the United States. Judy Reed, another Black female inventor, received her patent for the dough and knead roller eight years earlier, in 1884, and so Judy is considered the first Black woman to receive a patent in the USA.
The ironing board was first patented in 1858, but Boone’s improvement was patented on April 26, 1892 as U.S. Patent #473,653. Her patent made the ironing board more amenable to the “sleeves and bodies of ladies’ garments” (Source: USPTO). Boone’s improvement to the ironing board took the previously rigid edges of the board and curved them slightly to fit the seams of most women’s clothing of the time.
Sarah Boone was born enslaved in North Carolina in 1832. Her birth name was Sarah Marshall, and she later married a person named John Boone. They had eight children together. Shortly after their marriage, the couple was freed, and they moved to New Haven, Connecticut where she worked as a dressmaker. John Boone was a bricklayer. She died in New Haven in 1904.
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