Edith Clarke - Infinite Women

Born: 10 February 1883, United States
Died: 29 October 1959
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is republished from the Library of Congress and was written by Heather Thomas. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Edith Clarke (1883-1959) was an American electrical engineer with expertise in power systems and was influential in the design of dams across the American West, including Hoover Dam. She was a leading figure in her field and a woman of many firsts: the first woman elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in 1948 and the first woman to present a (prize-winning) paper at an AIEE meeting; the first woman to earn an electrical engineering graduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the first woman to teach in the engineering department at the University of Texas-Austin.

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.

Edith Clarke gained recognition in her field, becoming the first woman to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers’ annual meeting in 1926, but it was an uphill battle. When she initially could not find work as an engineer, she worked for General Electric as a supervisor of the women computers. While there, she invented an early graphing calculator (patented in 1925, four years after she filed the applications). Not being allowed to work in her actual field—electrical engineering—combined with a lower salary and professional status than men doing the same work, Clarke took a leave of absence from GE to teach physics at the Constantinople Women’s College in 1921. Absence seems to have made her bosses grow fonder, because when she returned, she was a salaried electrical engineer, making her the U.S.’s first professional female electrical engineer. She went on to write an influential textbook, develop and install turbines that generate hydropower in hydroelectric dams, and became the U.S.’s first female professor of electrical engineering in 1947. The following year, she commented to the Daily Texan, “There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there’s always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work.”