Mary Walton was a pioneer in reducing air pollution
during the Industrial Revolution.
The major scientific shortcoming of the
Industrial Revolution that transformed the U.S. in the years after the Civil
War was, and still is, pollution. One of the pioneers in the fight against
pollution, especially in large cities, was the independent inventor Mary
Walton.
In 1879, Mary patented a device that minimized the smoke that was
pouring into the air. Walton's
system (patent #221,880) deflected the emissions being produced into water
tanks, where the pollutants were retained and then flushed into the city sewage
system.
While living in Manhattan, Mary was particularly concerned with the
pollution. After cleaning up the air, she moved onto the noise pollution that
seemed to fill the air as well as the heads of New Yorkers. Working in her
basement, Walton built a model train set and began working to cut down on the
clanging of the trolleys. She built a wooden box, painted it with tar, lined it
with cotton, and filled it with sand. The vibration from the rails was
absorbed.
After successful trials fitting her apparatus
under the struts that supported real els, Walton received patent #327,422
(granted February 8, 1891). She sold the rights to New York City's Metropolitan
Railroad, which thrived thanks to Walton's new, environment-friendly system.
Walton herself was hailed as a hero — and as a feminist. As the Woman's Journal
put it twenty years later: "The most noted machinists and inventors of the
century had given their attention to the subject without being able to provide
a solution, when, lo, a woman's brain did the work..."