The Exceptional Trailblazer

My engineering seminar this year was very inspiring since my new facilitator had greatly persuaded me to be interested in the engineering field. One of the things that we had done for this round was researching about an influential engineer to understand their journey and their characteristic as an engineer. Below is my research paper about an exceptional engineer in the past…


Imagine if you were born to be a girl in the early 1900s, where meeting society expectation matter more than your own, what choice will you make? Follow society or yourself?

Historically, women were “confined to the home and expected to uphold traditional roles as a wife and mother.” They did not have the chance to discover or chase their dreams without receiving a reprimand.

Yet, by the start of the 20th century, there were 18.8% of women employed outside of the home as retail clerks, nurses, teachers, and typists—not as electrical engineers.

“I had always wanted to be an engineer, but felt that women were not supposed to be doing things like studying engineering.”

Around 135 years ago, Edith Clarke was born—February 10th, 1883—on a small community in Howard County, Maryland. She grew up in a busy household with other eight children as a daughter of a lawyer-farmer. It was a struggle for her at a young age to diagnosed a “learning disability” in reading and spelling and orphaned at the age of 12. However, it did not stop her from pursuing her passion for mathematics.

Being the black sheep among her siblings, she decided to use her inheritance money to study mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College even when she “earned rebukes from some relatives” for that decision. In 1908, she graduated from Vassar College with Phi Beta Kappa honors and decided to teach mathematics and physics at a private girls’ school in San Francisco and Marshall College in West Virginia. Nevertheless, everything was not easy for Clarke that after three years of teaching she became seriously ill.

“Thinking I was going to die,” she would later tell a reporter, “I just decided to do what I really wanted to do—study engineering.”

Image result for edith clarke

In 1911, Clarke decided to enroll in University of Wisconsin-Madison for civil engineering. In only her first summer, she got hired by Dr. George Campbell to become a “computer”—as in a human calculator who solves mathematical equations—at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T).

She was so into the work that she quitted school and worked full time for AT&T in which she became part of the “company’s effort to build the first transcontinental telephone line run between New York and California.” At the same time, Clarke also studied electrical engineering at Columbia University at night.

Electrical engineering had already captured Clarke’s heart that in 1918, she left AT&T and enrolled in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to continue in that field. Subsequently, making her became the first woman to ever earn a master of science degree (M.S) in electrical engineering from the prestigious institution in 1919.

Remarkably, during her time in MIT Clarke used her mathematical and creativity skills to invent “a simple graph-based calculator for solving line equations involving hyperbolic functions” that allow electrical engineers to “greatly simplify calculations for inductance and capacitance in power transmission lines.”

Image result for clarke calculator

After her years in MIT, Clarke became the first woman to professionally employed by General Electric company (GE) in the United States to “analyze power transmission problems that were submitted by power companies from across the US.”

In 1926, she also the first woman to ever address the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), “speaking at its convention in New York on Steady-State Stability in Transmission System.” Later on, in 1943, she published a book called Circuit Analysis of AC Power System that is still being used by many electrical engineers nowadays. After her death on 29th October 1959, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame with others brilliant people such as Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.  

Being an inspirational and exceptional inventor that she is, Edith Clarke possessed three qualities: mathematically-inclined, risk-taking, and strong-willed. As mentioned above, due to her inability to read and spell, Clarke was very passionate about mathematics that she even chose to major in it and had applied this talent to help invented the Clarke Calculator. Furthermore, Clarke took a significant risk in her life in quitting school to go work for AT&T without knowing what it was. Lastly, Clarke, the only one of her siblings, was very determined to continue her education even though there was criticism from society about her behavior as a woman.

As a woman who grew up in a patriarchal society, Clarke had demonstrated that women could do works just as well as men given the opportunity. She had paved a path that was not set before her and had completely ignored the society’s expectation to pursue her dreams. Edith Clarke taught us that no matter what condition we are in, we should always push beyond the established status quo.

“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.”


Works Cited

“Clarke, Edith (1883–1959).”. “Clarke, Edith (1883–1959).” Gale Library of Daily Life: Slavery in America, Encyclopedia.com, 2018, www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/clarke-edith-1883-1959

“10 Things You Should Know About Edith Clarke, A Badass, Pioneering Electrical Engineer.” Women You Should Know®, 9 Feb. 2018, www.womenyoushouldknow.net/10-things-you-should-know-about-edith-clarke-a-badass-pioneering-electrical-engineer/

“Edith Clarke.” Physics Today, American Institute of Physics, 10 Feb. 2017, www.physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.031415/full/

“Edith Clarke First Female Electrical Engineer | EAGLE | Blog.” Autodesk 2D and 3D Design and Engineering Software, Redshift EN, 12 Apr. 2018, www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/blog/edith-clarke/

“Edith Clarke: The First Female Electrical Engineer and Professor of Electrical Engineering.” Interesting Engineering, 2 May 2018, www.interestingengineering.com/edith-clarke-the-first-female-electrical-engineer-and-professor-of-electrical-engineering

“Mother Of Invention: This Barrier-Busting Electrical Engineer Joined Edison, Tesla in National Inventors Hall of Fame.” GE Reports, 10 Feb. 2017, www.ge.com/reports/edith-clarke-mother-of-invention/

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