Top 3 Quotes & Sayings by Mary Walton

Mary Elizabeth Walton was a nineteenth-century American inventor who was awarded two patents for pollution-reducing devices. In 1881, Walton created a method for reducing the environmental hazards of the smoke emitted from locomotive, industrial and residential chimneys. Her system deflected the emissions being produced by factory smokestacks into water tanks, where the pollutants were retained and later flushed "into the sewer, or into other suitable channels for conducting them to a distant or any desired locality". This water tank system redirected smoke, odors, and pollutants away from the city and out of the air before society had even come to an understanding of the problem. The extent of the problem was a dark cloud that hung in the air and an unpleasant odor, yet Walton inadvertently also helped to reduce air pollution and cancer-causing coal smoke.