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HE sixth day of last March witnessed a notable and significant event in the technical progress of women in America. On that day, Miss Nora Stanton Blatch was elected to membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers. At the time of her election, Miss Blatch was doing engineering work for the American Bridge Company. To-day she has gone a step farther. She is an official of the Board of Water Supply of New York. The analysis of drinking water has long been her technical specialty.

The admission of Miss Blatch to the American Society of Civil Engineers, is a triumph for the sex; but after all it is merely the outward and formal recognition of the quiet, unobserved advance which women have been making for many years in the technical departments of the world's work.

"The University of Colorado has just graduated its first woman engineer." "A young woman who has been studying naval architecture at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology has just been given a position at the Cramp shipyards." These paragraphs have recently appeared in the newspapers over the name of that able chronicler of woman's doings, Ida Husted Harper. And Henry S. Pritchett, whose great work as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has given him the right to speak with authority, does not yield to Ida Husted Harper in his enthusiasm for the possibilities which are open to the woman with technical training. Among other proofs of his confidence in the technical woman, Mr. Pritchett tells the following little story. A few years ago the head of a manufacturing company wrote to the head of the chemistry department in one of the largest American technical schools and said that he would like to offer a position to "the best man in the graduating class." The professor of chemistry replied: "The best man is a woman." The manufacturer wrote back: "Send her along."

Simmons College in Boston is perhaps. the most spectacular concrete recognition

Copyright, 1906, by The Technical World Company

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of the fact that there is a technical side, even to the household duties which have long been classed together under the phrase "woman's sphere." This college is devoted entirely to the idea of provid

HAS INVADED THE ENGINEERING WORLD. Miss Alice Law. of Chicago.

ing a technical training for women in sanitation, in ventilation, in the chemistry of cooking, in biology, in the cost of proper food, in the preparation of proper clothing, in the construction of hygienic houses, and in the art and science of healthy living. It is characteristic of the present age that there should be an institution of learning dedicated to the proposition that a woman who manages a home needs a few qualifications in addition to a good complexion.

But, besides the technique of housekeeping, which in itself is immensely important, there is the big, outside world. of technical endeavor, of engineering, of invention, of architecture, of electricity, of agriculture. In this world the pioneers of the secluded sex have already staked out their claims.

In Pittsburg, in the workshops of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, there is a woman who every day does engineering work of a high order, making the designs for direct-current electric motors and generators. This woman began her work Miss Lamme. She is now married to a fellow-engineer, Mr. R. S. Feicht. Mr. Feicht designs induction motors. His work, therefore, exactly parallels that done by Miss Lamme on direct-current motors, and their union was technically as well as sentimentally appropriate. Miss Lamme early won the

admiration of her fellow-engineers as "a slide-rule phenomenon," because of her unusual rapidity in making the intricate mathematical calculations for the construction of the metal monsters which provide the driving power for the gigantic machinery of modern factories.

Among other cases of woman engineers may be mentioned that of Miss Alice Law, of Chicago. Miss Law's struggle toward her ambition ought to prove stimulating to other ambitious young women. She was teaching school out in the Northwest, and had to begin her technical education by studying the catalogues of the big firms that manufacture machines. Then she went to a school of mines. After that she took engineering work at Purdue University. Leaving Purdue for real work in Chicago, she was employed for some time in an engineer's office. To-day she is on the staff of an engineering journal.

The American Institute of Mining Engineers has gone farther than the American Society of Civil Engineers. Instead of having one woman in its mem

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Mrs. Anney M. Brett, of El Paso, Texas, President and General Manager of the Southern Independent
Telephone Company.

She is an instructor in sanitary chemistry
in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology. She writes learned theses on the
"Potable Waters of Mexico." But she is
most widely and favorably known as the
author of practical books on "The Chem-
istry of Cooking and Cleaning," "Food
Materials," "The Cost of Living," etc.,
in which the results of her experiments
of many years' duration are put into pop-
ular form for general use. That Mrs.
Richards' technical skill is thoroughly

recognized, is shown by the fact that she has been employed as a chemist by the Chemical Manufacturers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company. As an official of that company, she has made many valuable experiments on the nature of explosive oils.

Out in the western country, the names of women mining engineers are beginning to be heard. Miss Clara Clark, of Butte, Montana, is doing the kind of work that any man mining engineer

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in blankets. They climbed perpendicular ladders in the darkness of deep mines. These little diversions of their student days have prepared them for the mature pleasures of their profession.

Mrs. Sara Steenberg, of Chicago, is also a mining expert. But she is not a mining engineer. In fact, although she knows a great deal about mines, she did not gain her knowledge till after she had acquitted herself with great credit in another profession. She is really and

even finally to the cities of Europe for the completion of her training. Mrs. Steenberg still devotes a full day to her fire insurance work. But in her leisure time she has acquired an interest in mines. Her latest success is with a lead and zinc mine in Wisconsin. Mrs. Steenberg is the manager of this mine, as well as its financial promoter. She makes the contracts for the sale of its product. She buys the machinery for it. She signs the pay-roll. Her success is an inspir

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and Southwestern States. She is also a writer of prominence, the author of a book of travel and of numerous short stories relating to the Chinese in Amer; ica, and is an authority on Oriental art.

If a woman can manage a mine or surmount obstacles in the field of insurance agency work, she ought to be able to manage a telephone company. And she can. Mrs. Anney M. Brett, of El Paso, Texas, has for some time been the president and manager of the Southern Inde

lenge the admiration of the boldest of promoters. With a telephone company already in the field and operating under a generous franchise from the city council. of El Paso, Mrs. Brett, a widow, with no capital but her knowledge of the telephone business and a determination to win, applied for a franchise to construct and maintain an independent telephone system. Her application was met with the strongest opposition from the "old" company, but Mrs. Brett had learned

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