Mary Beatrice Kenner Davidson invented the sanitary pad. Specifically, a sanitary belt with a moisture-proof napkin pocket, which made it much less likely that menstrual blood could leak. Unfortunately her invention was introduced to market thirty years after she invented it, because the company which first showed interest in the sanitary pad lost interest after realizing the inventor was African-American.
In 1957, Davidson was finally able to save up enough money to get her first patent independently. Pads had been sold since the 1920s. But Davidson’s version revolutionized the product by making it much, much more absorbent.
