Who invented the feminine napkin

Her most famous invention was a sanitary belt attached to a pocket that was moisture proof. She invented the belt first and patented the moisture proof pocket later. There were not very many options for women who were menstruating back in the day. There were tampons, but it was considered scandalous to use them. She added a cloth pouch with a moistureproof seal that attached to the belt. You put rags or cotton into the pouch. In the end, he said he was a textile mill owner in Coimbatore who was thinking of moving into the business, and requested some samples.

A few weeks later, mysterious hard boards appeared in the mail - cellulose, from the bark of a tree. It had taken two years and three months to discover what sanitary pads are made of, but there was a snag - the machine required to break this material down and turn it into pads cost many thousands of dollars.

He would have to design his own. Four-and-a-half years later, he succeeded in creating a low-cost method for the production of sanitary towels. The process involves four simple steps. First, a machine similar to a kitchen grinder breaks down the hard cellulose into fluffy material, which is packed into rectangular cakes with another machine.

The cakes are then wrapped in non-woven cloth and disinfected in an ultraviolet treatment unit. The whole process can be learned in an hour. Muruganantham's goal was to create user-friendly technology. The mission was not just to increase the use of sanitary pads, but also to create jobs for rural women - women like his mother. That's why, at the age of 14, Muruganantham had left school to find work. The machines are kept deliberately simple and skeletal so that they can be maintained by the women themselves.

The first model was mostly made of wood, and when he showed it to the Indian Institute of Technology, IIT, in Madras, scientists were sceptical - how was this man going to compete against multinationals? But Muruganantham had confidence.

As the son of a handloom worker, he had seen his father survive with a simple wooden handloom, despite fully mechanised mills in the city. That gave him the courage to take on the big companies with his small machine made of wood - besides, his aim was not really to compete. Unbeknown to him, the IIT entered his machine in a competition for a national innovation award.

Out of entries, it came first. He was given the award by the then President of India, Pratibha Patil - quite an achievement for a school dropout. Suddenly he was in the limelight. It was his wife, Shanthi. She was not entirely surprised by her husband's success.

However, this kind of ambition was not easy to live with. Not only was she shocked by his interest in such a matter, but it took up all of his time and money - at the time, they hardly had enough money to eat properly. And her troubles were compounded by gossip. After Shanthi, eventually Muruganantham's own mother and the rest of the villagers - who had all condemned, criticised and ostracised him - came round too.

Muruganantham seemed set for fame and fortune, but he was not interested in profit. But I did not want to. Because from childhood I know no human being died because of poverty - everything happens because of ignorance. He believes that big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas he prefers the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. There are still many taboos around menstruation in India.

How did we move from bandages and plant fibers to menstrual cups and modern tampons 1? And as period technologies improve, what have they changed for the people who use them? If you're wondering how people around the world managed their periods before the s, read our interview with historian Helen King here.

Period pants made of rubber 3. While products were marketed door-to-door by the s, the first commercial products available for a mainstream audience came in the s with the products appearing in catalogues. In the s, new tools like the Ladies Elastic Doily Belt started to appear in catalogues. You'd attach the pad to the silk and elastic belt 2.

But while inventors were beginning to see the need for these products, moral taboos around menstruation meant consumers were still hesitant to be seen purchasing them.

Case in point: the commercial failure of Lister Towels, the first disposal pad made of gauze and cotton, which first hit the market in 2. During the First World War, nurses noticed that cellulose was much more effective at absorbing blood compared to cloth bandages. This inspired the first cellulose Kotex sanitary napkin, made from surplus high-absorption war bandages, which was first sold in By , Kotex had become the first successfully mass-marketed sanitary napkin 3, 1.

While homemade menstrual rags were still in use throughout Europe until the s, the s brought a surge of ingenuity in period product offerings 1. Due to hygiene concerns about to the proximity of pads to fecal bacteria, tampons were generally concerned a healthier alternative by the medical community 4. Mary Barton, an English physician at the time, agreed in a correspondence published in the British Medical Journal in She conceded that leaving them in for too long could lead to infection Medical and marketing interviews found that most women did not return to pads once they had learned how to insert tampons correctly.

But many communities were hesitant to embrace tampons because of moral concerns about virginity, masturbation, and its potential to act as contraception 1. Nurses quickly found another use for it. This early ad for Kotex pads reminds buyers that the item is "on sale at stores and shops that cater to women. This ad depicts a nurse tending to a veteran in a wheelchair.

The text reads, in part, "Although a woman's article, it started as Cellucotton--a wonderful sanitary absorbent which science perfected for use of our men and allied soldiers wounded in France. Heitmeyer's "Absorbent Pad," June 14, The patent was assigned to International Cellucotton Products Company, the marketing arm for Kimberly-Clark consumer products, which merged with the parent company in Patent No.

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