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/

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

Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar, died on 20 June at the age of 90. She was a qualified chemical engineer when she joined a research team at DuPont in 1946. The company was at the forefront of the development of new polymers and plastic materials. Kwolek was tasked with researching the uses of polymers and low temperature condensation processes to develop new fibres strong enough to reinforce car tyres.  In her research she discovered an unusual molecular formation in the polymer she was developing. Initially, her peers dismissed the irregularity, but she persevered and found that this new material was much stronger than steel. This was patented in 1963 as ‘Fluorine Containing Aromatic Polycarbonamides’ as a ‘novel and useful class of polycarbonamides’.  From the beginning these fibres were able to withstand great extremes of heat and cold and were developed into Kevlar, the very strong, fireproof, yet lightweight, and bulletproof fabric. Today we take bulletproof vests worn by the police and combat forces for granted, these are made from Kwolek’s Kevlar and one million are now in existence around the world. They have been refined and styled to fit different sizes and tailored for men and women and Kevlar is also used  in fire-fighters’ boots, bulletproof helmets, fibre optic cables, car braking systems and skis as well as in space vehicles and for landings on Mars. During her career, Stephanie Kwolek was involved in 28 patents for Dupont, some as the outright inventor and many as part of a research team. She seems to have been modest about her achievements, but there is no doubt that her attention to detail created something extraordinary.

Ingenious Women, researched and written by Deborah Jaffé, was published in 2003. In this fascinating book, she introduces the women who saw themselves as inventors, electricians, engineers, milliners, nurses, motorcar drivers, gentlewomen, spinsters, wives or duchesses, and gives them their rightful title of ‘ingenious women’. This hidden history begins in 1637 with Amye Everard Ball, the first English woman patent-holder and ends with Maria Montessori’s educational equipment in 1914. Hundreds of women are included like: Margaret Knight,  an engineer  who won a lengthy court battle with her employer to retain ownership of one of her patents;  the widowed Martha Coston who perfected her late husband’s idea for signal flares at sea;  Madame Roxey Caplan , the corsetiere, who was awarded the prize medal as ‘Manufacturer, Designer and Inventor’ at the Great Exhibition in 1851 for her corsetry designs and Elizabeth Barnston Parnell who patented methods to extract precious metals from rock. The book ends in 1914 and the outbreak of the World War I which was a watershed in women’s lives but, as this book shows, their innovative ideas had already been making an impact on all our lives for nearly 300 years.More information and to order a copy at: www.deborahjaffe.net/igwom.html

WSRN – Revealing Lives Conference 22-23 May 2014
Deborah Jaffé, author of Ingenious Women,  will give a paper on Women and Patents at the Women in Science Research Network Conference, Revealing Lives, at The Royal Society, London, on 22nd & 23rd May 2014.

The conference programme is available at: http://womeninscience.net/