WITH: Women in Technological History

Re this great website and blog

Many thanks to Melanie for the new WITH website and blog!  She has really done so much good work for us.  I have tried, as I said, to find some funding to help compensate this work and will continue to, once I’m finished with these recent travels.  We all know how bad many economic indicators appear now, but I would hope to be able to send her something myself, if I don’t find outside funding.

 I’m sure funds that WITH receives in dues and other contributions mainly are applied to the travel award and our functions at SHOT.  I would like to see if there could be a category for such work as Melanie has done for our website, too.

Also, thanks, Heather, for getting back to me about your proposed panel.  Maybe it will be possible to present it, or a similar one, next year.  As some in WITH will remember, our first SHOT panel in 1976, along with the Dynamos and Virgins book that followed, had a paper by Vern Bullough on aspects of reproductive technologies.  Perhaps he and/or his wife would be interested in helping provide input w. r. t. your session, if it should be offered in the future at SHOT. 

I am glad that Daryl proposed a very interesting session for Lisbon involving another major area of the history of women and technology that was one of the earliest subject areas we dealt with in our first session and in the Dynamos and Virgins book.  I do hope it is accepted.

Re the discussion about women at MIT, Ellen Swallow Richards, about whom I’ve written in several books and papers, was, as far as I know, the first female student and faculty member there.  I think that is who Heather is referring to w. r. t. 1871. As those of us who have studied her know, she wasn’t treated very well, especially in the loss of her earned Ph. D. due to discrimination.  I interviewed some women faculty and former students at MIT in my 25-year study on the history of women in engineering.  Vi  Haas told me that when she was a Ph. D. student in math there, MIT gave her and several other female graduate students a broom closet, literally, as an office!  She said that the isolation she and the others felt there in the 40s and 50s was still quite extreme.  I myself wanted to attend MIT and was accepted for graduate work in chemistry there in the mid-1960s, when there were still very few women there.  MIT has publicly recognized for some time that Ellen Swallow Richards did not receive the best treatment there.  I feel sure that it is very different now, as I think some of our female colleagues in WITH and SHOT experience.

 My lengthy book, which was published in 1996 as an archival resource as well as a history New Images, New Paths: A History of Women in Engineering i n the U. S., 1850-1980 details some of this information and is held in various libraries and archives in this country and elsewhere. Marilyn Bever’s book also contains very useful information on women at MIT in the past.

Finally, that brings up Rachel and Daryl’s request that we send in bibliographic information for the WITH bibliography. When Daryl first asked us for this, I sent her something a year or two ago, and she said she received it.  I don’t know if Rachel has it, or it I should send another.  You can find most of the citations on my company’s webpage, T & L Enterprises.  I can send the information again, if you need me to do so.

Also, re the WITH at 21 and 50 comments, my copies of our earliest WITH newsletters, beginning in 1976, are still in boxes or filing cabinets in storage.  I never learned whether our WITH/SHOT archives holds these early copies.  I can find them, I’m sure.  I was the first WITH secretary and newsletter editor.  That was not noted in the WITH at 21.  That is one correction I can note.  I’m also concerned that we update accurately the names and dates of other secretary-treasurers and newsletter editors (I also took in dues, established a WITH account and served as the first WITH treasurer).  I think some have written the WITHlist about their involvements and dates.  We can probably get that information from the past WITH newsletters.

Sorry for the long post, but when I finally do get the time in this traveling, I respond to a week or so of posts.

 Martha