With a nod to International Women’s Day, which was celebrated this week, we thought we’d get into the spirit by sharing the inspiring stories of the female engineers who have shaped the world we live in today.
The figures show that just 11% of the UK’s engineering workforce is female, which is the lowest proportion of female engineering professionals anywhere in Europe. But women have a huge amount to offer the industry - many just don’t receive the encouragement they need to enter the profession.
With that in mind, we thought we’d celebrate the successes of eight inspiring female engineers with the hope of encouraging more women to consider a career in engineering.
Serial inventor and all-around genius Sarah Guppy was one of Georgian and Victorian Britain’s most entrepreneurial figures. She took out no less than 10 patents in the first half of the nineteenth century, including a method of clearing barnacles off ships, a candlestick that allowed candles to burn longer, and a bed with built-in exercise equipment (no thanks, Sarah).
Despite experiencing some success with these inventions, including a navy contract worth an enormous £40,000 for her barnacle clearing idea, her most successful patent was her first. That patent was filed in 1811 and detailed a new method of constructing and erecting bridges.
She let Thomas Telford, who created the Menai Suspension Bridge, use her design for free. she also did the same thing for her friend Isambard Kingdom Brunel when he needed help designing the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Ada Lovelace, born Ada Gordon in 1815, was a British aristocrat and daughter of Lord Byron. She was raised by her mathematics loving mother Annabella Milbanke under a strict regimen of science, logic and maths. That was her attempt to prevent her daughter from developing the tempestuous temperament of her father, and her plan worked.
Ms Lovelace spent her childhood designing steam flying machines and boats and glued to the scientific magazines of the time, which were packed with pictures of new inventions from the Industrial Revolution. At the age of 19, Ada married William King, who later became the Earl of Lovelace, hence the name.
In 1833, she met Charles Babbage - considered by some to be ‘the father of the computer’ - at a party. She and Babbage hit it off and became lifelong friends. At the time, Babbage was working on an invention he called the Analytical Engine, which was never built but had all the elements of a modern computer.
In 1843, she translated an article on the Analytical Engine by an Italian engineer. However, she also added extensive notes of her own, which included statements and observations about the potential uses of the machine that were visionary and that Babbage had not identified himself. That led to Ada being heralded as the ‘first computer programmer’.
Martha Coston quite literally lit up the engineering world in 1859, when she sold the rights to her patented signalling flare system to the US Navy for $20,000, or around $2.6 million in today’s money. And what’s even more impressive is that her flare system, known as Coston Flares, is still used by the US Navy today.
If you think that’s remarkable, just listen to Coston’s back story. She was left a widow at the age of 21 with no less than four kids to support. Financially hard up, as you would be with all those hungry mouths to feed, Coston had to get creative to make ends meet.
That’s when she found an incomplete design for a pyrotechnic flare in her late husband’s notebook. She then spent the next ten years perfecting the design to produce a bright, long-lasting and multi-coloured flare that would be suitable for ship-to-ship and ship-to-land signalling over long distances.
Emily Roebling played a hugely influential part in the construction of one of the most famous bridges in the world - the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
Initially, it was Ms Roebling’s father-in-law who was commissioned to build the bridge, but he died during its construction. The job then fell to his son and Emily’s husband, Washington Roebling, but he soon became ill after developing decompression sickness while working on the underwater sections of the bridge.
So then Emily stepped into the fray and took control of the bridge’s construction. Not only did she act as the project manager but she also took most of the chief engineer’s duties and planned the completion of the bridge with her husband. In honour of her heroic contribution, Emily was the first person to cross the bridge when it was officially opened in 1883.
It’s often the case that the simplest inventions are the best, and Mary Anderson’s invention is an example of how a seemingly unremarkable idea can become a staple of modern life. If you’ve ever run out of windscreen washer fluid while driving down a recently gritted motorway (guilty), you’ll understand what an important invention the humble windscreen wiper was.
Mary Anderson had her Eureka moment while visiting New York in a trolley car. The harsh weather meant she couldn’t see any of the sights and her driver could barely see the road. He drove with both windows down and had to wipe away the snow and ice from the windscreen as he drove. Not safe and probably quite cold.
Ms Anderson decided there and then that it was a situation she could improve on, and in 1903, she filed a patent for the first windscreen wiper. In all their wisdom, the car manufacturers initially doubted her idea, thinking it would be a distraction to drivers. It was not until a decade later, when thousands of Americans were driving their own cars, that the car makers cottoned on and windscreen wipers became standard equipment.
You know those annoying people who can turn their hands to just about anything and be infuriatingly brilliant at it? Ms Lamarr was one of those. Not only was she an impossibly glamorous film actress in the 1930s and 40s, but she also liked to do a bit of tinkering on the side. And when we say tinkering, we’re not just talking about making a mess in a shed.
To wind down from her busy acting schedule, Lamarr used her engineering acumen to invent a remote-controlled communications system for the US military. What made her invention all the more remarkable is that it used frequency-hopping technology that essentially forms the basis of today’s WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.
Unfortunately for Lamarr, the glass ceiling was still firmly in place in the 1940s, so no one realised the genius of her invention until the patent had run out. And to this day, neither Lamarr nor her estate have seen a penny from the multi-billion pound industry she helped to create.
Read more about the fascinating life of Hedy Lamarr, including how she bicycled away from a life with her domineering first husband in the middle of the night. Legend.
Anyone remember Tipp-Ex? Great stuff wasn’t it, and strangely satisfying to apply. Although Tipp-Ex was and still is a brand name, the white correction fluid it is based on was the brainchild of Ms Bette Nesmith Graham.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and as a secretary working in a Texas bank, you can just imagine how frustrating it would be for Bette to have to rewrite an entire document after making a single mistake. There isn’t a backspace on a typewriter, so instead, Bette got her inspiration when watching painters cover their mistakes by applying an additional coat.
She used a kitchen blender to create a water-based paint that matched the colour of the stationary the bank used and she secretly used it to correct her typing mistakes. Her boss never noticed a thing, and unsurprisingly, all her secretary colleagues wanted in on the action. In 1956, she started the Mistake Out company, and before too long she was selling one million bottles a year.
It’s not only the female engineers from yesteryear who have an inspiring story to tell. Although engineering is still a male-dominated industry, it is becoming easier for female engineers to break through. Marissa Mayer is one example of a female engineer who is shaping our contemporary world.
Now one of the world’s most powerful businesswomen, Marissa Mayer started out as Google’s 20th employee and its first female engineer. She contributed to the design of everything from the Google homepage and Gmail to Google Earth and the browser Chrome.
She stayed at the tech company for 13 years before becoming the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company by taking over at Yahoo. She now runs a tech incubator called Sunshine (formerly Lumi Labs).
We certainly hope so. From computer engineers creating the coolest apps to astronauts and inventors, the possibilities are endless for women in engineering. Find out what it really means to be a woman in engineering, learn more about the opportunities that are out there and stay tuned for International Women in Engineering Day on 23 June 2022. Or sparing that, you could just apply for a job with the team here at Bonnet.
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
With a nod to International Women’s Day, which was celebrated this week, we thought we’d get into the spirit by sharing the inspiring stories of the female engineers who have shaped the world we live in today.
The figures show that just 11% of the UK’s engineering workforce is female, which is the lowest proportion of female engineering professionals anywhere in Europe. But women have a huge amount to offer the industry - many just don’t receive the encouragement they need to enter the profession.
With that in mind, we thought we’d celebrate the successes of eight inspiring female engineers with the hope of encouraging more women to consider a career in engineering.
Serial inventor and all-around genius Sarah Guppy was one of Georgian and Victorian Britain’s most entrepreneurial figures. She took out no less than 10 patents in the first half of the nineteenth century, including a method of clearing barnacles off ships, a candlestick that allowed candles to burn longer, and a bed with built-in exercise equipment (no thanks, Sarah).
Despite experiencing some success with these inventions, including a navy contract worth an enormous £40,000 for her barnacle clearing idea, her most successful patent was her first. That patent was filed in 1811 and detailed a new method of constructing and erecting bridges.
She let Thomas Telford, who created the Menai Suspension Bridge, use her design for free. she also did the same thing for her friend Isambard Kingdom Brunel when he needed help designing the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Ada Lovelace, born Ada Gordon in 1815, was a British aristocrat and daughter of Lord Byron. She was raised by her mathematics loving mother Annabella Milbanke under a strict regimen of science, logic and maths. That was her attempt to prevent her daughter from developing the tempestuous temperament of her father, and her plan worked.
Ms Lovelace spent her childhood designing steam flying machines and boats and glued to the scientific magazines of the time, which were packed with pictures of new inventions from the Industrial Revolution. At the age of 19, Ada married William King, who later became the Earl of Lovelace, hence the name.
In 1833, she met Charles Babbage - considered by some to be ‘the father of the computer’ - at a party. She and Babbage hit it off and became lifelong friends. At the time, Babbage was working on an invention he called the Analytical Engine, which was never built but had all the elements of a modern computer.
In 1843, she translated an article on the Analytical Engine by an Italian engineer. However, she also added extensive notes of her own, which included statements and observations about the potential uses of the machine that were visionary and that Babbage had not identified himself. That led to Ada being heralded as the ‘first computer programmer’.
Martha Coston quite literally lit up the engineering world in 1859, when she sold the rights to her patented signalling flare system to the US Navy for $20,000, or around $2.6 million in today’s money. And what’s even more impressive is that her flare system, known as Coston Flares, is still used by the US Navy today.
If you think that’s remarkable, just listen to Coston’s back story. She was left a widow at the age of 21 with no less than four kids to support. Financially hard up, as you would be with all those hungry mouths to feed, Coston had to get creative to make ends meet.
That’s when she found an incomplete design for a pyrotechnic flare in her late husband’s notebook. She then spent the next ten years perfecting the design to produce a bright, long-lasting and multi-coloured flare that would be suitable for ship-to-ship and ship-to-land signalling over long distances.
Emily Roebling played a hugely influential part in the construction of one of the most famous bridges in the world - the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
Initially, it was Ms Roebling’s father-in-law who was commissioned to build the bridge, but he died during its construction. The job then fell to his son and Emily’s husband, Washington Roebling, but he soon became ill after developing decompression sickness while working on the underwater sections of the bridge.
So then Emily stepped into the fray and took control of the bridge’s construction. Not only did she act as the project manager but she also took most of the chief engineer’s duties and planned the completion of the bridge with her husband. In honour of her heroic contribution, Emily was the first person to cross the bridge when it was officially opened in 1883.
It’s often the case that the simplest inventions are the best, and Mary Anderson’s invention is an example of how a seemingly unremarkable idea can become a staple of modern life. If you’ve ever run out of windscreen washer fluid while driving down a recently gritted motorway (guilty), you’ll understand what an important invention the humble windscreen wiper was.
Mary Anderson had her Eureka moment while visiting New York in a trolley car. The harsh weather meant she couldn’t see any of the sights and her driver could barely see the road. He drove with both windows down and had to wipe away the snow and ice from the windscreen as he drove. Not safe and probably quite cold.
Ms Anderson decided there and then that it was a situation she could improve on, and in 1903, she filed a patent for the first windscreen wiper. In all their wisdom, the car manufacturers initially doubted her idea, thinking it would be a distraction to drivers. It was not until a decade later, when thousands of Americans were driving their own cars, that the car makers cottoned on and windscreen wipers became standard equipment.
You know those annoying people who can turn their hands to just about anything and be infuriatingly brilliant at it? Ms Lamarr was one of those. Not only was she an impossibly glamorous film actress in the 1930s and 40s, but she also liked to do a bit of tinkering on the side. And when we say tinkering, we’re not just talking about making a mess in a shed.
To wind down from her busy acting schedule, Lamarr used her engineering acumen to invent a remote-controlled communications system for the US military. What made her invention all the more remarkable is that it used frequency-hopping technology that essentially forms the basis of today’s WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.
Unfortunately for Lamarr, the glass ceiling was still firmly in place in the 1940s, so no one realised the genius of her invention until the patent had run out. And to this day, neither Lamarr nor her estate have seen a penny from the multi-billion pound industry she helped to create.
Read more about the fascinating life of Hedy Lamarr, including how she bicycled away from a life with her domineering first husband in the middle of the night. Legend.
Anyone remember Tipp-Ex? Great stuff wasn’t it, and strangely satisfying to apply. Although Tipp-Ex was and still is a brand name, the white correction fluid it is based on was the brainchild of Ms Bette Nesmith Graham.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and as a secretary working in a Texas bank, you can just imagine how frustrating it would be for Bette to have to rewrite an entire document after making a single mistake. There isn’t a backspace on a typewriter, so instead, Bette got her inspiration when watching painters cover their mistakes by applying an additional coat.
She used a kitchen blender to create a water-based paint that matched the colour of the stationary the bank used and she secretly used it to correct her typing mistakes. Her boss never noticed a thing, and unsurprisingly, all her secretary colleagues wanted in on the action. In 1956, she started the Mistake Out company, and before too long she was selling one million bottles a year.
It’s not only the female engineers from yesteryear who have an inspiring story to tell. Although engineering is still a male-dominated industry, it is becoming easier for female engineers to break through. Marissa Mayer is one example of a female engineer who is shaping our contemporary world.
Now one of the world’s most powerful businesswomen, Marissa Mayer started out as Google’s 20th employee and its first female engineer. She contributed to the design of everything from the Google homepage and Gmail to Google Earth and the browser Chrome.
She stayed at the tech company for 13 years before becoming the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company by taking over at Yahoo. She now runs a tech incubator called Sunshine (formerly Lumi Labs).
We certainly hope so. From computer engineers creating the coolest apps to astronauts and inventors, the possibilities are endless for women in engineering. Find out what it really means to be a woman in engineering, learn more about the opportunities that are out there and stay tuned for International Women in Engineering Day on 23 June 2022. Or sparing that, you could just apply for a job with the team here at Bonnet.
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
With a nod to International Women’s Day, which was celebrated this week, we thought we’d get into the spirit by sharing the inspiring stories of the female engineers who have shaped the world we live in today.
The figures show that just 11% of the UK’s engineering workforce is female, which is the lowest proportion of female engineering professionals anywhere in Europe. But women have a huge amount to offer the industry - many just don’t receive the encouragement they need to enter the profession.
With that in mind, we thought we’d celebrate the successes of eight inspiring female engineers with the hope of encouraging more women to consider a career in engineering.
Serial inventor and all-around genius Sarah Guppy was one of Georgian and Victorian Britain’s most entrepreneurial figures. She took out no less than 10 patents in the first half of the nineteenth century, including a method of clearing barnacles off ships, a candlestick that allowed candles to burn longer, and a bed with built-in exercise equipment (no thanks, Sarah).
Despite experiencing some success with these inventions, including a navy contract worth an enormous £40,000 for her barnacle clearing idea, her most successful patent was her first. That patent was filed in 1811 and detailed a new method of constructing and erecting bridges.
She let Thomas Telford, who created the Menai Suspension Bridge, use her design for free. she also did the same thing for her friend Isambard Kingdom Brunel when he needed help designing the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Ada Lovelace, born Ada Gordon in 1815, was a British aristocrat and daughter of Lord Byron. She was raised by her mathematics loving mother Annabella Milbanke under a strict regimen of science, logic and maths. That was her attempt to prevent her daughter from developing the tempestuous temperament of her father, and her plan worked.
Ms Lovelace spent her childhood designing steam flying machines and boats and glued to the scientific magazines of the time, which were packed with pictures of new inventions from the Industrial Revolution. At the age of 19, Ada married William King, who later became the Earl of Lovelace, hence the name.
In 1833, she met Charles Babbage - considered by some to be ‘the father of the computer’ - at a party. She and Babbage hit it off and became lifelong friends. At the time, Babbage was working on an invention he called the Analytical Engine, which was never built but had all the elements of a modern computer.
In 1843, she translated an article on the Analytical Engine by an Italian engineer. However, she also added extensive notes of her own, which included statements and observations about the potential uses of the machine that were visionary and that Babbage had not identified himself. That led to Ada being heralded as the ‘first computer programmer’.
Martha Coston quite literally lit up the engineering world in 1859, when she sold the rights to her patented signalling flare system to the US Navy for $20,000, or around $2.6 million in today’s money. And what’s even more impressive is that her flare system, known as Coston Flares, is still used by the US Navy today.
If you think that’s remarkable, just listen to Coston’s back story. She was left a widow at the age of 21 with no less than four kids to support. Financially hard up, as you would be with all those hungry mouths to feed, Coston had to get creative to make ends meet.
That’s when she found an incomplete design for a pyrotechnic flare in her late husband’s notebook. She then spent the next ten years perfecting the design to produce a bright, long-lasting and multi-coloured flare that would be suitable for ship-to-ship and ship-to-land signalling over long distances.
Emily Roebling played a hugely influential part in the construction of one of the most famous bridges in the world - the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
Initially, it was Ms Roebling’s father-in-law who was commissioned to build the bridge, but he died during its construction. The job then fell to his son and Emily’s husband, Washington Roebling, but he soon became ill after developing decompression sickness while working on the underwater sections of the bridge.
So then Emily stepped into the fray and took control of the bridge’s construction. Not only did she act as the project manager but she also took most of the chief engineer’s duties and planned the completion of the bridge with her husband. In honour of her heroic contribution, Emily was the first person to cross the bridge when it was officially opened in 1883.
It’s often the case that the simplest inventions are the best, and Mary Anderson’s invention is an example of how a seemingly unremarkable idea can become a staple of modern life. If you’ve ever run out of windscreen washer fluid while driving down a recently gritted motorway (guilty), you’ll understand what an important invention the humble windscreen wiper was.
Mary Anderson had her Eureka moment while visiting New York in a trolley car. The harsh weather meant she couldn’t see any of the sights and her driver could barely see the road. He drove with both windows down and had to wipe away the snow and ice from the windscreen as he drove. Not safe and probably quite cold.
Ms Anderson decided there and then that it was a situation she could improve on, and in 1903, she filed a patent for the first windscreen wiper. In all their wisdom, the car manufacturers initially doubted her idea, thinking it would be a distraction to drivers. It was not until a decade later, when thousands of Americans were driving their own cars, that the car makers cottoned on and windscreen wipers became standard equipment.
You know those annoying people who can turn their hands to just about anything and be infuriatingly brilliant at it? Ms Lamarr was one of those. Not only was she an impossibly glamorous film actress in the 1930s and 40s, but she also liked to do a bit of tinkering on the side. And when we say tinkering, we’re not just talking about making a mess in a shed.
To wind down from her busy acting schedule, Lamarr used her engineering acumen to invent a remote-controlled communications system for the US military. What made her invention all the more remarkable is that it used frequency-hopping technology that essentially forms the basis of today’s WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.
Unfortunately for Lamarr, the glass ceiling was still firmly in place in the 1940s, so no one realised the genius of her invention until the patent had run out. And to this day, neither Lamarr nor her estate have seen a penny from the multi-billion pound industry she helped to create.
Read more about the fascinating life of Hedy Lamarr, including how she bicycled away from a life with her domineering first husband in the middle of the night. Legend.
Anyone remember Tipp-Ex? Great stuff wasn’t it, and strangely satisfying to apply. Although Tipp-Ex was and still is a brand name, the white correction fluid it is based on was the brainchild of Ms Bette Nesmith Graham.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and as a secretary working in a Texas bank, you can just imagine how frustrating it would be for Bette to have to rewrite an entire document after making a single mistake. There isn’t a backspace on a typewriter, so instead, Bette got her inspiration when watching painters cover their mistakes by applying an additional coat.
She used a kitchen blender to create a water-based paint that matched the colour of the stationary the bank used and she secretly used it to correct her typing mistakes. Her boss never noticed a thing, and unsurprisingly, all her secretary colleagues wanted in on the action. In 1956, she started the Mistake Out company, and before too long she was selling one million bottles a year.
It’s not only the female engineers from yesteryear who have an inspiring story to tell. Although engineering is still a male-dominated industry, it is becoming easier for female engineers to break through. Marissa Mayer is one example of a female engineer who is shaping our contemporary world.
Now one of the world’s most powerful businesswomen, Marissa Mayer started out as Google’s 20th employee and its first female engineer. She contributed to the design of everything from the Google homepage and Gmail to Google Earth and the browser Chrome.
She stayed at the tech company for 13 years before becoming the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company by taking over at Yahoo. She now runs a tech incubator called Sunshine (formerly Lumi Labs).
We certainly hope so. From computer engineers creating the coolest apps to astronauts and inventors, the possibilities are endless for women in engineering. Find out what it really means to be a woman in engineering, learn more about the opportunities that are out there and stay tuned for International Women in Engineering Day on 23 June 2022. Or sparing that, you could just apply for a job with the team here at Bonnet.
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
