In 2022 my usually rather varied (some might say scatter-gun) searches to find stories about women in the history of engineering was mainly focussing on the women who have worked in chemical engineering. This is to contribute to a year-long project initiated by Professor Raffaella Ocone, of Heriot Watt University, one of the world’s most…
Margaret E. Knight’s internal combustion engines (and paper bags)
Margaret Knight in 1912, still busily at work* Margaret Eloise Knight (1838-1914) is celebrated as one of the USA’s most prolific female inventors and patent holders. I stumbled across her story, arguably more than one story, whilst picking up on a research theme I hadn’t looked at for a while: women who designed cars or…
War Factory: serendipity and Mass Observation
A lifelong pal phoned me to ask if I knew of a book she had just become aware of: War factory, published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in 1943, using materials from the Mass Observation project. It seemed to her to be my sort of book (it is) and I vaguely thought it seemed familiar (it…
Was Dulcibella the First British Woman* to Pilot an Aeroplane in an Air Race?
In 1923 Lord Edward Grosvenor put up a trophy for a 400-mile flying race: the “Grosvenor Challenge Cup“. The press reported that a woman was one of the entrants, thought to be the first time a woman had entered a flying race: Mrs Oliver Atkey in “a machine of the D.H. type” (Western Daily Press…
Books about Women in STEM [part1]
Below is a very incomplete and un-annotated list of some of the books I have used in my research into women’s history in engineering. This is a list of some of the books which I have donated over the years to the Glasgow Women’s Library. It therefore does not include a similar number in my…
Finding Miss Daisy
Daisy Hampson, motorist and racer Amongst the many women with access to serious funds who were early motorists, racers and rally drivers was a Miss Daisy Hampson. Described by the usually very knowledgeable Speedqueens blog as ‘enigmatic’ and by an also knowledgeable audience member at one of my recent talks as a woman who seemed…
Jonathan Ferguson’s story – an update
In 2016 I published what I knew then about Jonathan Ferguson’s unusual story. Delightfully, someone who worked with him has contacted me with some further information and given permission to share it here. Jonathan’s life as a scientific civil servant, after having transitioned from female in the very early days when gender-reassignment surgery had become…
Winifred Pink – from racing cars to tea vans
In preparing a talk* about women in automobile racing, for the 2021 annual Scottish Tour of the Vintage Sports Car Club, I was quickly submerged in the vast number of wonderful stories about amazing women. Even restricting it to just women who raced in the UK still leads to hundreds, some very well known, others…
The Fourth Signatory
On the 23rd June 1919 seven women met to decide how they could set up an association for women who worked in engineering – the Women’s Engineering Society. The paperwork took a while but, on 19th December 1919, they all put their names on the official documents that would, on Christmas Eve, register the society…
Our Sisters Also Served and Died – Wrens lost due to war action in WW2
From the Naval History Net site I have extracted this list of members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service who were killed by war action in WW2 (not including those who died due to illness or road accidents). Despite the WRNS motto “Never at sea” in fact quite a lot of women were lost at…
Building the Research about Women in Building Research
As loyal readers may recall, some while ago I did a rather boring blog that was basically just a list of some names of women scientific civil servants I had encountered in the records of the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Its merit, if any, was that some people who knew stuff about some of the women…
Boarding School Mechanics – some engineering episodes in girls’ novels
Part 3 in the series “Once Upon a Time There was an Engineer, looking for female engineers in film and fiction” comes from Guest Blogger Kay Whalley First, a disclaimer. I’m not an engineer. I collect girls’ books from about 1900 to about 2000. Girls’ school stories; girls’ adventure stories and girls’ career books. References…
women engineers' history 