Florence King

When the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in an obscure patent dispute in 1922, it ruled against Florence King, the first woman to argue a patent case before justices. She tried again a year later and became the first woman to win a case before the Supreme Court.

King, an Iowa native who became the country’s first female patent attorney, spent a career advocating for a woman’s place in America’s legal industry. She pulled in $100,000 a year, she said in an interview with a Wisconsin newspaper, “because she made up her mind to do work ahead of her.”

“I believe in women,” King told reporter Roy Gibbons. “The sex has great possibilities before it.”

But she added a warning for women who would follow in her footsteps: “It’s either career or marriage. The two won’t mix.”

Gibbons reported that being a lawyer looked too easy for King, so she became a patent attorney and studied mechanical and electrical engineering at night while working in a law office.

“Yes, it was a hard grind,” King told Gibbons. “I gave the best of my years to the career I had wanted since a tiny dot. But I won and am happy. Happy because I did it all by myself.”

— Alex Gangitano