Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was a trailblazing American journalist whose contributions extended well beyond the newsroom. Born in May 1864, she turned 151 years old in 2015, an occasion marked by a commemorative Google Doodle.<\/p>\n
Bly began her journalism career at the age of eighteen, joining The Pittsburgh Dispatch<\/em> after impressing its editor with her writing. By her mid-twenties she had become a world-renowned journalist known for immersive, activist reporting. In 1895 she retired briefly from the press following her marriage to businessman Robert Seaman, though the union \u2014 remarkable for the forty-three year age difference between them \u2014 brought her the financial security she had long sought.<\/p>\n After her husband’s death, Bly assumed management of his company, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. It was here that she demonstrated a second form of genius. Observing that metal had become an inexpensive substitute for wooden containers, she set about designing a steel barrel suited to American industrial needs. Her first experiment leaked; the second was defective. By 1905 she had realised her objective, recording in her own words that she had “finally worked out the steel package to perfection, patented the design, put it on the market and taught the American public to use the steel barrel.”<\/em> The Iron Clad factories were promoted at the 1901 Pan-American Trade Fair as being “Owned exclusively by Nellie Bly \u2013 the only woman in the world personally managing industries of such a magnitude.”<\/em><\/p>\n The inspiration for the design had come during a visit to Europe in 1904, where Bly observed glycerin containers fashioned from steel. “I determined to make steel containers for the American trade,”<\/em> she later remarked. Her patented steel barrel became the template for what is today the ubiquitous 55-gallon drum, an industrial standard that endures worldwide.<\/p>\n The Iron Clad Manufacturing Company eventually succumbed to debt, and Bly returned to newspaper reporting, covering women’s suffrage events and the Eastern Front during the First World War. Elizabeth Jane Cochran Seaman died of pneumonia in 1922, two years after the Nineteenth Amendment secured her right to vote. The New York Evening Journal<\/em> described her as “the best reporter in America.” Her invention of the steel barrel stands as a lasting contribution to America’s petroleum and industrial history, and to the broader record of women’s participation in technological innovation.<\/p>\n This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified attorney before acting on any matter discussed here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nellie Bly, best known as a pioneering journalist, also invented the steel barrel, now recognized as the 55-gallon drum. Her innovation and leadership at Iron Clad Manufacturing marked a significant milestone in American industrial history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":36,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[7167,7169,7165,7428,7170,7166,1587],"class_list":["post-21593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-patents","tag-55-gallon-drum","tag-iron-clad-manufacturing","tag-nellie-bly","tag-patent-history","tag-petroleum-history","tag-steel-barrel","tag-women-inventors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21593"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149805,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21593\/revisions\/149805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Disclaimer<\/h2>\n