Overview
‘Ladies
Can’t Climb Ladders’: an illustrated talk by Jane Robinson.
Exactly 100
years ago (in 2020) the IMechE took legal advice on whether or not to elect
Verena Holmes as their first woman member. Counsel advised that the Institution
should treat women applicants in exactly the same way as men, and judge them on
their engineering aptitude. Miss Holmes was still an undergraduate at this
stage, so was refused admission. Four years later she tried again, and this
time, was admitted – though only as an associate member. She went on to
specialise in marine, locomotive and internal combustion engines, becoming one
of the best-known women engineers of her generation.
Miss Holmes
was typical of many pioneering women engineers: born at a time when doctors
warned that thinking too much withered the womb; with an unladylike ambition to
enter the profession; seasoned by wartime experience in workshops and factories,
and then thwarted from practising her profession by the Establishment. In 1919
an Act was passed to outlaw sexual discrimination in the professional workplace,
but it was riddled with loopholes. Opposition was frustrating and insulting,
yet most of the women who bravely ventured into this man’s world were not
strident, not adversarial; just highly-spirited, good-humoured, determined, and
utterly inspiring.
Jane
Robinson’s new book, Ladies Can’t Climb
Ladders, is about the individuals who braved prejudice and made a name for
themselves between the wars in academia, architecture, the Church, engineering,
law and medicine. It’s also about the men who supported them, and about how
much things have changed (or not) during the past century. This talk will concentrate
on the engineers: characters like Rachel Parsons (the first woman to read
Mechanical Engineering at Cambridge, and founder-member of the Women’s
Engineering Society); Tilly Shilling; the Debenham sisters (fearsome
motorcyclists) and Annette Ashberry, founder of the all-female Atalanta
Engineering plant. They were fascinating but essentially ‘ordinary’ women doing
extraordinary things at a time of great social and technological innovation:
role-models for their age – and, importantly, for ours.
About Sir Hugh Ford:
Ford was born in 1913, the son of a freelance inventor, and
was educated at Northampton School. At the age of eighteen, he began an
apprenticeship in the locomotive works of the Great Western Railway. In 1934 he
was awarded a Whitworth Scholarship which enabled him to attend the City and
Guilds College, graduating with first class honours and gaining the Bramwell
Medal for achieving first place in the mechanical engineering list. He later
gained a PhD from City and Guilds College for his work on heat transfer and
fluid flow problems.
During the
Second World War, Sir Hugh joined Imperial Chemical Industries Alkali Division
in Cheshire as a Research Engineer. He worked on commercial high-pressure
polyethylene plant and the design of a pilot plant for the manufacture of
chlorinated polyethylenes. Three years later he became Chief Technical Officer
to the British Iron and Steel Federation and progressed to the position of Head
of the Mechanical Working Division of the British Iron and Steel Research
Association. His research into the operation and characteristics of cold strip
mills gained him the IMechE’s Thomas Hawksley Gold Medal in 1948. His work
eventually led to the development of automatic gauge control which became
popular worldwide. By 1947, he had gained experience in establishing new
laboratories, at Sketty Hall and the Hoyle Street, Sheffield laboratories of
BSRIA.
A brief
period as Technical Director of Paterson Engineering, waterworks engineers, was
followed by a Readership in Applied Mechanics at Imperial College (previously
City and Guilds College). A year later he received the DSc(Eng) of the
University of London. He established a consulting practice, Sir Hugh Ford and
Associates Ltd, working as Chairman to link the fields of academia and industry,
and joined several companies as a director.
In 1951, he
became Professor of Applied Mechanics and oversaw the rebuilding and
re-equipment of the Mechanical Engineering Department. During this period, he
worked on applied mechanics research and teaching, plasticity theory and metal
working processes. He worked across numerous fields including polymer
engineering, biomechanics, high-pressure technology, fatigue and fracture
mechanics. He was invited to join the Research Grants Committee of DSIR which
later became the Science Research Council. In 1968 he became the first Chairman
of the Council’s Engineering Board, promoting the Total Technology concept, a
scheme for postgraduate training linked to management as well as technical
concerns. In 1966 he became Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Head of
Department at Imperial College. In 1978 he was made Pro-Rector and retired in
1980.
Sir Hugh
Ford’s professional achievements are numerous. He has been President of the
Institutes of Metals and Sheet Metal Engineering and in 1983 was awarded the
James Alfred Ewing Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers for his
contribution to engineering research. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society
in 1967. He was a founder member of the Fellowship of Engineering and was a
vice-President from 1981-84. In academia he received honorary doctorates from
Salford, Queen’s (Belfast), Aston, Bath and Sheffield universities and was a
Fellow of Imperial College. He was knighted in 1975.
He joined
the IMechE council in 1962, serving until 1982, and became involved in the
Applied Mechanics Group, the Engineering Policy Review Committee, the Council
Awards Committee and the Technical Board. He worked on the Journal of
Mechanical Engineering Science and founded the Materials Forum, chairing from
1979 to 1984. In 1984, he became an Honorary Fellow of the IMechE. The Hugh
Ford Management lectures are held annually by the IMEchE’s Management Group.
Professor
Sir Hugh Ford died on 28 May 2010 at the age of 96.