Happy Engineers Week!
Long before women engineers were celebrated, there were amazing women doing great things to pave the way.
Although their contributions were sometimes unrecognized, women with ingenuity have always had the power to do great things. To celebrate National Engineers Week we're highlighting female engineer trailblazers!
Engineers are in almost every field you can imagine. There are Aerospace Engineers, Civil Engineers, Design Engineers, Manufacturing Engineers, Sales Engineers, Electrical Engineers Production Engineers, Safety Engineers, Software Engineers and many more. Learn all about the ladies below who’ve led and continue to lead progress in their fields!
Patricia Bath
Since she entered the field of ophthalmology, Patricia Bath has been breaking new ground! She was the first Black person to serve as an ophthalmology resident at New York University and the first woman on staff at the Jules Stein Eye Institute, but most importantly for this discussion, she was the first African-American female doctor to receive a patent for medical purposes. That patent was for the Laserphaco Probe, a medical device she invented in 1981 that quickly and painlessly uses a laser to dissolve cataracts in the eye, then irrigates and cleans the eye to make inserting a replacement lens quick and easy. The Laserphaco Probe is now used internationally as a quick and safe way to prevent blindness due to cataracts. She is also the inventor of a new discipline, community ophthalmology, which is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the population have access to eye and vision care. Even if people can't afford an operation, Bath believes that ophthalmologists should do all they can to care for their vision; after all, she says, "The ability to restore sight is the ultimate reward."
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy was one of the most glamorous stars of the black and white film era — and she was also one of the minds behind an invention that provided the foundation for GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi technology! Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr was a gifted mathematician and engineer, and when World War II broke out, she wanted to make a contribution to the war effort by improving torpedo technology. Working with musician and composer George Antheil, Hedy developed the idea of "frequency hopping," which could encrypt torpedo control signals, preventing enemies from jamming them and sending the torpedoes off course. Although Lamarr and Antheil were granted a patent for the idea in 1942, the US Navy didn't utilize their technology for 20 years, finally putting it to use during a 1962 blockade of Cuba! Since then, Lamarr's spread-spectrum technology has become the foundation for many of the portable devices that we use every day, for which she was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in 2014.
Mary Sherman Morgan
When Mary Sherman Morgan decided to study science, she had no idea that her work would help make space race history! The American chemist left university to take a secret position for a munitions factory during World War II, improving explosives and ordinance for use at the front. When the war was over, she applied to work for North American Aviation's Rocketdyne Division, working on rocket propellants; out of 900 engineers, she was one of only a handful without a college degree — and the only woman. When NAA was contracted by the Jupiter missile project to design a better rocket fuel, Morgan was named the technical lead; she ended up creating Hydyne, which propelled the Jupiter rocket as it placed America's first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit. Because so much of her work was classified, few people knew about her contributions until her son, George Morgan, wrote a play and a book about her life. In retrospect, he laughs remembering how he struggled as a child to launch home made rockets in the Arizona desert: "If I'd known how much expertise in rocketry my mother had, we could have asked her for help and saved ourselves a great deal of trouble."
Ayla Hutchinson
After New Zealand teen Ayla Hutchinson saw her mother cut her finger while splitting kindling with a hatchet, she realized that there had to be a better way to get this critical job done. As a science fair project, she decided to invent a device that made it easier and safer to cut kindling. The result is the Kindling Cracker, a cast-iron device that uses a built-in axe blade in a safety cage: the cage holds the wood while you hit it with a hammer, easily splitting the log in pieces. She received such a positive response to her prototype that she developed the idea further, and her father helped her found a company to manufacture it; two years later, she estimates that there are tens of thousands of Kindling Crackers in use across New Zealand. Equally exciting was a 2015 distribution agreement with a major US tool company, which has already received and sold 22 tons of Kindling Crackers in North America. For Ayla, though, the best part is knowing she's helping people: "It also gives people with disabilities or physical impairments the freedom to cut their own kindling again.... It makes it easier and safer for everyone to cut kindling."
Mary Anderson
Can you imagine driving a car in bad weather without windshield wipers? Until Mary Anderson thought of them, that was the only option! Anderson was already a real estate developer and rancher when she visited New York City in 1902 and rode on a trolley car where the driver had to open the panes of the front window in order to see through falling sleet. As soon as she returned home to Alabama, she set to work conceiving a solution. Her device used a lever inside the vehicle to control a rubber blade on the windshield; similar devices had been made earlier, but Anderson's was the first effective model. Amazingly, car manufacturers initially didn't see the value in her invention; one Canadian firm declined her invention in 1905, saying "we do not consider it to be of such commercial value as would warrant our undertaking its sale." However, in 1922, Cadillac became the first car manufacturer to include a windshield wiper on all its vehicles, and after Anderson's patent expired, they quickly became standard equipment.
Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta
Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta were graduate students at Columbia University's School of Architecture when the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010; in one of their classes, they were assigned a project to find a way to help with disaster relief. After speaking to a relief worker, Stork and Sreshta realized that there was an often-forgotten need after disasters strike: light. The pair decided to create an inflatable, waterproof, and solar-powered light, the LuminAID Solar Light. Their design can be packed flat, charges in 6 hours to provide light for 16, and even features a handle to make it easy to carry. They used a crowdfunding campaign to make their first 1,000 lights, and after LuminAID became a favorite with outdoor enthusiasts — and in home emergency kits — they started a Give Light Project: one light is donated for every light purchased. They have since provided lights to Nepal and to Syrian refugees. Thanks to the work of these two creative innovators, more people will have access to the gift of light during the darkest of times.
Marie Van Brittan Brown
American nurse Marie Van Brittan Brown was concerned about safety when she was home alone at odd hours of the day or night; the crime rate in her neighborhood in Queens, New York, had been increasing, and police response time was slow. She realized that she would feel less vulnerable if she could see who was at her door — without opening it. Working with her husband Albert, an electrician, Brown created a system of four peep holes and a movable camera that connected wirelessly to a monitor in their bedroom. A two-way microphone allowed conversation with someone outside, and buttons could sound an alarm or remotely unlock the door. The Browns received a patent for their security system in 1969, and Brown received an award from the National Science Committee for her truly innovative idea. Her idea became the groundwork for all modern home security systems, and she's also inspired many fellow inventors, including her own daughter, who also holds multiple patents.
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