Nineteenth-century women turned music lessons into interactive entertainment, complete with spinning wheels and ivory counters.
"Across the Atlantic, Abbie T. Hays, principal of a music school in Wichita, Kansas, filed a patent in 1895 for a “musical game device” designed to teach notation with pictures depicting the words spelled out by note-names (think B-A-G or B-E-E). Later that year, Sarah W. Featherstone, a schoolteacher in Toledo, Ohio, filed a patent for Nota Bene, which used a spinning wheel to teach children rhythm. And in 1897, the enterpreneurial Evelyn Fletcher of Toronto filed both Canadian and US patents for a Music Block Game. Her “Fletcher Music Method” would later be endorsed by luminaries such as John Philip Sousa and Hugo Riemann, and it was highly popular with schoolteachers. This is just a small selection of the names and devices that pop out of the archive.
In my experience searching historical patent records, one is more likely to come across games designed by women than by men."
