The National Women in Engineering Day Campaign has just been launched for 2016.  The celebrations to mark women in engineering will take place on 23 June but any activities during that week are all included in campaign. Further info from:  nwed@wes.org.uk.

Why is it  that, all too often, one person’s achievements dominates a family? This is possibly the case of Rachel Parsons whose family was dominated by her father’s achievements. He was a great engineer in the North East of England and at his firm, Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company, he  pioneered the building of the ship The Turbinia. Arguably, Rachel’s achievement was great and should not be overlooked.

Rachel Parsons was born in 1885 and during her childhood was fascinated by science and her father’s engineering pursuits. She sailed with him on Turbinia on  its early voyages and was determined to have a career in the exciting, heavy engineering industries of Tyneside. She was also one of that first wave of women to go to Cambridge University where she was one of only three to study mechanical sciences. Despite her academic achievement and experience she never received her degree from Cambridge because, at that time, women were barred from doing so.

If you are in Cambridge (UK) on 8 March come to WOW (Women of the World Festival) and hear Deborah Jaffé give a historical perspective of women’s inventions in science and engineering. She will talk about  her research for Ingenious Women and subsequent findings. More information at http://www.wowcambridge.cam.ac.uk/

Mildred Blakey patented about 18 inventions between 1867 and 1905 from, mainly, Pennsylvania addresses but also Ohio. They were mostly on metal tubing and gas powered engines. Clearly, Blakey was quite prolific.

Autumn Stanley on page 343 of her “Mothers and daughters of invention”, published in 1993, acknowledges Mildred as being male. She had listed her on page 137 of “Women, aging and ageism”, 1990, edited by Evelyn Rosenthal, in an earlier version of the table, in a table of prolific woman inventors. I certainly would have assumed that Mildred was a woman although the reference to “himself” in e.g. his US134349, if spotted, might have given reason to pause.

I’ve just noticed, also, that at the bottom right of the patent page given below we are told that the attorney, Christy, is “his atty.”, not “her atty.” That was luck. Admittedly, Helen Blanchard’s US496929 says on the initial page “her attorneys” — I wonder if anyone has investigated this niche area ? How common was it for the gender to be stated ?

It would be an awful job if every “woman” with more than a few patents had to be investigated in the census to see if he/she was listed as male or female. In this case, the census returns do state that Mildred was a man, who married twice, and had at least five children. They also state that he was born in England in 1842 and immigrated in 1860 (fas stated for instance in the 1900 census for Ashtabula county, Ohio). By the 1880 census he had become manager of a tube mill in Etna, PA.

Mildred Blakey is a rare name to put it mildly and the only candidate who fits seems to be in the April 1861 census for Leeds, Yorkshire, aged 19, born in Bradford, and a model maker. He was a boarder in a public house.

Bradford parish church records the baptism on the 20 October 1841 of Mildred Blakey, son to Jobson, wool comber, and Mary Ann Blakey, of Bowling Lane He had been born 22 September 1841. A wool comber was someone who prepared wool to be spun — Mildred did well in those days to rise from his humble origins.

His year of birth was incorrectly given as 1842 when it was 1841, and his date of immigration was not 1860 as he was in the British census in April 1861. It shows that you have to be careful in just accepting “facts” that people state, just as you have to be careful in assuming that someone with a woman’s name is really just that.

I have already posted on Bernice Noyes who also might appear to be a woman but who proved to be a man.

The French patents before 1902, when they start to appear on the free Espacenet database, are very hard to search.

I have traditionally used a variety of tools at the British Library: annual name indexes which do not lead provide a way to the actual publications, granted patents that were never published as the owners failed to pay a fee a year later (the original ought to be at Paris), a subject index in English to 1876 which is arranged by subject title with no cross references — so you have to guess at the heading. The actual publication volumes generally have several to a year, each arranged by subject, and the drawings are at the end with grey outlines…

Recently INPI, the French Patent Office, began putting data on a database called Brevets francais du 19e siecle.  It is all in French. , and coverage is from 1791 to 1855, though I’ve noticed material to 1861. In the results lists, there should always be a “notice” with bibliographic details, and often there is a “dossier” which is a reproduction of a document. This always seems to be handwritten, and is sometimes at least just the formal grant of a patent.

The help notes state that you can put in the “Desposant” field any  of the words madame, madamoiselle or veuve [widow] to find women. Presumably this was noted at the time by the authorities.

There are at present 433 entries for madame, 294 for madamoiselle, and 282 for veuve, making 1009 in all. There are currently 53,528 entries. This suggests 1.8% are by women, a high number for the period. Certainly in the 1850s and 1860s the number of Frenchwomen taking out British patents was high, perhaps even exceeding those taken out by the British (I haven’t fully checked out that period yet). 

However, the field includes “mandataire”, some sort of patent attorney, and there was at least Madame Rabatel with 7 entries in that role. So the actual numbers are somewhat lower.

It is possible to search by profession. Hence a request for “artiste”, run against veuve, gave 5 hits.

My impression is the vast majority of the women, and perhaps the man as well, had French addresses (they could still be say Americans — Robert Fulton has four patents in there, from Paris addresses.

Finally, the help notes strongly recommend using the index which is available, as the little A/B button, to the right of each field (except date) in the advanced mode.

I must admit I found the database a little clunky, but at least it provides a possible way in. It is still a terror to try to get from data found there to any publication in the long series kept at the British Library. There certainly isn’t anything comparable for the early US or UK material. Plans are to eventually go on to 1902.

I was looking through the British registered design entries for 1914, as listed in the patents journal, and found two by the Suffragettes.

They were applied for on the 24 November 1914 by the East London Federation of Suffragettes at 400 Old Ford Road, Bow, and were registered as 644045 and 644046. They were registered in Class XVI, which is simply for miscellaneous goods. No title was provided (this was the practice until the 1930s). Hence I had no idea what the designs looked like or were for.

The archives for the British registered designs are in the National Archives (TNA), and there is a leaflet explaining how to search them, How to find a registered design 1839-1991. The big difference between British registered designs and the American Design Patents is that the latter are published as proper documents and can be found, and to some degree searched, online. It is a big shame as the British registered designs are so numerous, in the millions.

I visited the TNA and ordered up BT52/675, which is the box that contains a single sheet for each of these designs. Again no title, just photos of the designs. Each sheet has two photos, of different profiles, and in each case I have taken an image of the top appearance. Here is 644045.

And here is 644046.

We can only guess at their purpose. They are clearly dolls, one female and the other male.

I wonder if they were meant to be used for, say, a mimed play where it is shown that the male doll represents a child who will grow up to be a voter, while for no good reason his sister will grow into a disenfranchised woman ? If anyone has any information about their intended use I would be glad to hear about it. As registered designs were meant to prevent anyone else using a certain look they seem odd things to register — they could have used any dolls for the purpose.

In any case, the Suffragette campaign soon came to a halt. It was decided to call a  truce during World War I, and in 1917 — probably because of the big effort made by so many women in war work, and their substituting in many jobs for men on active service — votes for women over the age of 30 was voted through Parliament, extended to be on a par with men to the age of 21 in 1928.

GIRLS COMING TO TECH! A History of American Engineering Education for Women is the culmination to the research undertaken by Amy Sue Bix, who  Associate Professor in the Department of History at Iowa State University. Beginning in the late 1800s, it covers the years of WWII and up to the present. It is packed with information – hard research and anecdotal evidence. It covers those women, like Emily Roebling, whose husbands might have been taken ill or died, so that their wives had to take over a business. She completed his work on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. There is Edith Griswold who , in 1880, took a course in engineering in New York so she could set up her own company drafting the drawings for patent applications. Then there are all those women who helped with the war effort – as mechanics on the production lines in munitions factories and the qualified engineers who worked on the design of the machines of war. These women included some who worked on the Manhattan Project. Hollywood grabbed and glamorised  Rosie the Riveter’s  image. But immediately after the war women were pushed out of the work roles and all the freedoms, back home, their previous lives deemed unfeminine. Gradually,  women have been accepted onto engineering courses, but even in the 1970s they encountered sexism and discrimination. Some claimed that women’s voices should not be heard in the lab. Even so, about 25% of undergraduate engineers in the USA are women. No doubt it is a similar number in the UK.

GIRLS COMING TO TECH! A History of American Engineering Education for Women.

Amy Sue Bix. MIT Press 2013. ISBN 978-0-262-01954-5 HB. 360pp