Amanda Jones

Biography

Amanda Theodosia Jones (October 19, 1835 – March 31, 1914) was an American author and inventor, most noted for inventing a vacuum method of canning called the Jones Process. Developed in 1872 with Professor Leroy C. Cooley and covered by a series of patents the following year, her process used vacuum-sealed glass jars to preserve fruits and vegetables without cooking them, making home food preservation more practical than the soldered tin cans then in use. In 1890 she put the method to commercial use as founder of the Women's Canning and Preserving Company in Chicago, a business that employed only women and reflected her support for women's rights and suffrage. Jones was also a poet and writer. After her first poem appeared in 1854, she published several volumes of verse, including Ulah, and Other Poems (1861) and Poems (1867), and contributed frequently to the Ladies' Repository and other periodicals. A convert to spiritualism who considered herself a medium, she attributed many of her inventions and business decisions to spirit guidance, a belief she described in her 1910 memoir A Psychic Autobiography. She patented other devices as well, among them an oil burner, holding six patents in all, and in 1893 was named in A Woman of the Century among the most notable American women of the 19th century.

Bio from Wikipedia