Madeline M.Turner
Madeline Turner's Diagram for Her Fruit-Press
A patent was granted in 1916 to an African American woman, Madeline M. Turner of Oakland, California. Fruit, such as oranges or lemons, were passed through a feed opening, passing through cutters that severed the fruit in half then moved along between the plates where the juice was extracted. Turner's Fruit-Press was a complex piece of engineering that in many ways foreshadowed the machines used in the food industry today. Like Turner's prototype, the efficiency of these machines depend on their ability to execute several functions at once. Turner's invention was in a sense an assembly line in itself: Fruit were moved along by plungers moving at different sppeds. The fruit was pushed through stationary knives that cut them in half, then again passed through the presser. The pulp was allowed to drop through an opening and the juice discharged through another.
Chicomecoatl Aztec Goddess of Food
References:
Mothers and Daughters of Invention by Autumn Stanley (Rutgers University Press, 1995) p. 54Web Sites:
Description of the Workings of Turner's Press African American Women Inventors
