Interior Alaska News

March is Women's History Month, and we're especially excited to celebrate the vital role women have played in transportation!  

Martha Coston made an important contribution to transportation by perfecting and bringing to market a system of maritime signal flares. The system of bright, long-lasting signal flares revolutionized naval communication and continues to be in use and has saved thousands of lives.

Martha's husband, Benjamin Coston, experimented with color-coded night signals as an effective means for ships to communicate with each other and with people on shore. After his death in 1848, Martha realized that, while a promising start, his idea still needed a great deal of work before it could become a reality. For about a decade, she determinedly sought to fully develop the system. With the help of chemists and firework experts, Martha created a truly functional system of multi-colored night flares. She founded the Coston Manufacturing Company to produce and sell the flares.

In 1859, Martha obtained a U.S. patent for a pyrotechnic night signal and code system. That same year, the U.S. Navy initially ordered a set of 300 flares and subsequently placed larger orders. Over time, Coston flares were used at all U.S. Life-Saving Service stations to warn vessels of hazardous coastal conditions and summon rescuers whenever there was a shipwreck.

Learn more about Martha Coston: https://transportationhistory.org/.../women-in.../  

#WomensHistoryMonth #womeninhistory #herstory #WomenInTransportation

Original source can be found here.