Quick test: Name the person who invented GPS.

Drawing a blank? That's fine. Most people would. But here's what makes it worse: you've probably used GPS multiple times today:&nbsp; Google Maps to avoid traffic. Uber to get home. That fitness app tracking your morning run. . .&nbsp; All of it works because of one woman: Gladys West.

And she's not alone. The home security system? Black woman. The code behind GIFs? Black woman. Touch-tone phones, caller ID, central heating? Black women. Black women. Black women.

So why don't we know their names? That's not an accident, it's theft. Intellectual property theft on a generational scale, wrapped up in racism, sexism, and the kind of erasure that makes billions of pounds for everyone except the actual inventors.

Gladys West: The Woman Behind Every Map on Your Phone

The entire modern world runs on knowing exactly where you are at any given moment. And it exists because Gladys West, a Black mathematician working for the US Navy in the 1970s and 80s, programmed an IBM computer to create an accurate model of the Earth's shape. Her calculations became the foundation for the satellite-based GPS we use today.

Every time Google Maps tells you to turn left, that's Gladys West. Every time Uber finds your flat, that's Gladys West. Every single navigation app on the planet owes its existence to her work.

So where's her statue? Her documentary? Her billionaire status?

She didn't get public recognition until 2018. She was 87 years old. Google, Apple, Uber, Garmin, all of them worth billions, built empires on her mathematics. Her name? Nowhere.

Marie Van Brittan Brown: Ring Owes Her Everything

You know those doorbell cameras everyone's obsessed with? The ones that let you see who's at your door from your phone? The entire home security industry?

Marie Van Brittan Brown invented it in 1966.

She was a nurse living in Queens, New York. Crime was high, police response was slow, and she didn't feel safe. So she created the first closed-circuit home security system, complete with a camera, a monitor, a two-way microphone, and a remote door lock.

Sound familiar? That's because it's literally the blueprint for all the security camera systems you've ever seen.

Marie got her patent in 1969. The New York Times wrote about it once. Then nothing. She died in 1999 with no recognition, no wealth, no credit.

Meanwhile, Ring was sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars. Marie's estate? Got nothing.

Dr Shirley Jackson: Your Phone Wouldn't Exist Without Her

Touch-tone phones, caller ID, call waiting, fibre optic cables, the entire infrastructure of modern telecommunications. All of it traces back to Dr Shirley Jackson's research at Bell Labs in the 1970s.

She was the first Black woman to earn a PhD from MIT. Her work in theoretical physics made technologies possible that we now take completely for granted.&nbsp;

Dr Jackson eventually got recognition; she became president of a major university, received awards, and got her flowers. But the telecom companies that made billions off her research? AT&amp;T, Verizon, Nokia? Her name isn't on any of it.

Lisa Gelobter: Every GIF You've Ever Sent

If you've ever sent a reaction GIF, watched a video online, or used any kind of animation on the internet, you've benefited from Lisa Gelobter's work.

In the 1990s, she was part of the team that developed Shockwave, the animation technology that made online video and interactive content possible. Her coding laid the groundwork for GIFs and streaming videos.

She went on to work at Hulu, BET, and even in the White House tech office. She's respected in tech circles. But ask the average person who made GIFs possible, and they'll give you a blank stare, or credit some white guy.

Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, every platform using her foundational work. Her name in their history? Nowhere.

Dr Patricia Bath: Saving Eyesight, Getting No Credit

Cataracts are one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. The treatment that's now standard across the globe, quick, precise, minimally invasive laser surgery, exists because of Dr Patricia Bath.

In 1986, she invented the Laserphaco Probe, a device that revolutionised cataract surgery. Before her invention, the procedure was risky and invasive. Her laser made it safer, faster, and accessible to millions.

She became the first African American woman doctor to receive a medical patent. She spent her life advocating for blindness prevention globally. She died in 2019.

The ophthalmology industry she transformed barely says her name. Medical device companies making millions off procedures her invention enabled are all silent.

When it’s cold, you turn up the heating without thinking twice. That comfort, the ability to heat individual rooms in your house from a central system, traces back to Alice H. Parker's 1919 patent for a gas-powered heating furnace.

Before her design, people relied on dangerous coal stoves and fireplaces. Her invention influenced the modern HVAC systems we have today.

She never saw it mass-produced in her lifetime. HVAC companies, Carrier, Trane, all of them, built billion-pound industries. Alice Parker got a patent and disappeared from history.

Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner: The Invention Racism Stole

This one will make you furious. Mary Kenner invented the sanitary belt in 1956, the precursor to modern menstrual pads. It was adjustable, moisture-proof, and hygienic.&nbsp;

She approached a company to manufacture it. They were interested until they found out she was Black. They rejected her outright. She held the patent but couldn't profit. By the time it expired, other companies had developed suspiciously similar products. Always, Tampax, Kotex, they all sell versions of her invention today. Mary Kenner died in 2006, largely unrecognised. The period product industry today is worth billions.

Sarah Boone: The Ironing Board in Your Cupboard

Before 1892, people ironed on planks of wood. Sarah Boone, a formerly enslaved woman who became a dressmaker, designed the narrow, curved ironing board we still use today.

She got her patent. Then she vanished from the historical record. Every ironing board company on Earth uses her design, but her name is nowhere.

Do you see the pattern? Black woman invents something world-changing. White-owned company profits. History forgets.

For most of history, Black people couldn't legally own patents, or if they could, their employers filed under their own names. Even when Black women held patents, they lacked the capital, the connections,&nbsp; and the access to manufacture or market their inventions.

Academic work got credited to white male supervisors. Corporate research was borrowed without acknowledgement. And then there's the outright racism, like what happened to Mary Kenner; rejected because of her skin colour, whilst her idea was too good to ignore.

The result? Textbooks that don't teach these names. Curricula that skip over them. A whole generation growing up thinking innovation is a white man's game.

This black history month, we remind ourselves to do better. We say their names. We teach them in schools, online, and anywhere else. We demand that the companies making billions off their innovations acknowledge them, loudly, publicly, with actual reparations. We push for curriculums that don't erase Black contributions. We make these stories impossible to ignore.

Because black women have been building the future for centuries and the world has spent those same centuries pretending they don't exist.

Gladys West invented GPS. Marie Van Brittan Brown created home security systems. Lisa Gelobter pioneered online animation. This Black History Month, discover the Black women inventors whose groundbreaking work built modern technology, and why their names were erased from history.

Op-ed

Black History Month: Women Inventors That Never Got Credit

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