The Long Read: Discovering the Victorian Engineer Henrietta Vansittart, part 2
Name
2024-04-16_TheLongReadDiscoveringTheVictorianEngineerHenriettaVansittartPart1_FINAL.pdf
Description
visibility:open
Size
7.99 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
OIJCn/TF+Tc=
Resource type
Blog post
Creator (person)
Rees Koerner, Emily
Date published
May 4, 2020
Abstract
In my previous blog, I highlighted the enigmatic life and career of the Victorian naval engineer Henrietta Vansittart (1833-1883), who I had been researching as part of the Electrifying Women project on the history of women in engineering. I found myself intrigued by this self-trained engineer, who had been introduced to engineering through her father James Lowe, and who held patents for the Lowe Vansittart propeller in both the UK and the USA. There are not that many examples of women who practised as engineers and held patents in the 19th century, though they did exist, for example, Hertha Ayrton and Sarah Guppy. Henrietta Vansittart, despite belonging to this list, appears to have received little academic attention, suggested reasons for which I discussed in the previous blog. I also examined the veracity of the various blog posts that exist online, finding some of them to contain false or unverifiable information in them. I concluded that further research was needed into her life and work; not only did Vansittart lead an exceptional working life, she also had a colourful – and ultimately tragic – personal life. Since writing previously, I have sought to find primary materials that might help bring more to light and was able to trace material about Vansittart in three different archive. This blog post discusses that research.
Project(s)
Electrifying Women: Understanding the Long History of Women in Engineering
Funder
| Funder name | Awards |
Arts and Humanities Research Council | |
Publisher
Science Museum Group
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright