Gertrude Entwisle: A true pioneer of electrical engineering
In 1916, the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE, now the IET) welcomed its first woman student. Three years later, she became its first woman graduate and, in 1920, its first woman associate member. Her name was Gertrude Entwisle.
Born in Lancashire in 1892, Gertrude attended Manchester High School for Girls. There, she received a scholarship to the University of Manchester to study physics under Ernest Rutherford. After the Faculty of Engineering allowed women into its classes, she became one of the first women to sit in their engineering lectures.
In 1915, Metropolitan-Vickers (formerly British Westinghouse) was searching for woman engineers, much of their workforce having gone to fight in the war. They reached Gertrude and she became their first woman technical employee. Initially, she analysed and recorded tests but, after only three months, was promoted to design.
To give her practical experience, it was agreed Gertrude would spend half the day in the shops and half on design. The very notion of allowing a woman practical training was so unheard of that it needed to be passed by the Board of Directors, who said she must wear trousers, only to then, in a fluster, switch to demanding she wear a skirt.
Despite generally supportive colleagues, she still met resistance. Men used hammers to warn others she was approaching, and one threatened to leave rather than work alongside a woman. Yet her position paved the way for other women to take on technical roles during the First World War.
In the evenings, Gertrude attended engineering classes at Manchester College of Technology as the first woman to do so, and, from 1914 to 1918, spent weekends nursing in a Red Cross hospital.
By the time Gertrude began attending IEE meetings, she was already accustomed to overcoming barriers. At her first meeting, she was mistaken by the lecturer for a militant suffragette and, at her second, she was denied entry for half an hour.
Unmarried, she was able to continue at Metropolitan-Vickers (who did not then employ married women) after the war and worked there until her retirement in 1954 – the first retirement of a British woman with a complete career in electrical engineering. Her work included the design, manufacturing and costing of D.C. and A.C. motors and, in later years, focused on exciter design. Her machines were used in Battersea and Croydon Power Stations and in Victoria, Australia, in the then-largest synchronous condenser.
Gertrude was involved with the Women’s Engineering Society’s (WES) formation in 1919 and became a member of its council. In 1924, she also helped launch the Electrical Association for Women (EAW) – a ‘daughter organisation’ of WES concerned with householders – and sat on its national executive committee. When the EAW’s Manchester branch was established in 1926, she was its first honorary secretary. She was appointed WES Vice President in 1937 and served as President from 1941 to 1943.
Described as setting ‘an example without parallel’, Gertrude strove to make engineering more visible and accessible to women. She delivered papers such as ‘Engineering as a Career for Women’ and ‘Women Engineers – In War and After’ and was eager to expand the electrical knowledge of women in the home. As a woman engineer, she achieved several firsts in her career but worked to make sure she would not be the last.
If you would like to find out more, contact the IET Archives at archives@theiet.org.