Elsie MacGill

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Elizabeth Gregory Muriel "Elsie" MacGill (born March 27, 1905 in Vancouver , Canada ; † November 4, 1980 in Cambridge , Massachusetts , USA ), known as the "Queen of the Hurricanes", was the world's first female aircraft designer. During her work as an aerospace engineer for the Canadian vehicle and aircraft manufacturer Canadian Car and Foundry (CC&F) in Fort William ( Ontario ) during World War II) she strove to improve Canada's position in the aircraft industry. After working for CC&F, she ran a successful management consultancy. From 1967 to 1970, MacGill was a commissioner for the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada.

Childhood, youth and education

MacGill was on March 27, 1905 Vancouver , the daughter of James Henry MacGill, a well-known Vancouver lawyer , and Helen Gregory MacGill, the first judge in British Columbia , was born. Her mother was an advocate for women's suffrage and influenced her decision to study mechanical engineering . MacGill graduated from the University of Toronto and became the first Canadian woman to graduate in electrical engineering in 1927 .

Upon graduation, she took a job at a company in Pontiac , Michigan . There she began graduate studies in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan and enrolled for the Master of Science program in engineering in the fall of 1927 to begin working on aircraft construction and conducting research and development in the university's new aerospace facilities . In 1929, MacGill became the first woman in North America, and probably the world, to graduate with a Masters in Aerospace Engineering.

MacGill contracted polio shortly before graduation and was offered the prospect of likely being in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She refused to accept this restriction and learned to walk with the help of metal sticks. She wrote magazine articles on airplanes and flight to fund her doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge , Massachusetts .

Career as an engineer

In 1934 she took a position as an assistant engineer at the aircraft manufacturer Fairchild Aircraft in Montreal . In 1938, she became the first woman to be elected as a sponsoring member of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers .

When she was employed as a senior aerospace engineer at the vehicle and aircraft manufacturer Canadian Car and Foundry (CC&F) in the same year, she was the first woman in the world to hold such a position. At CC&F, she developed and tested a new training aircraft , the Maple Leaf Training II .

The Maple Leaf was first designed and built at CC & F's factories in Fort William (now Thunder Bay), where MacGill had moved. The Maple Leaf II was never used by the Commonwealth armed forces , but ten of them (two fully assembled, eight more for on-site assembly) were sold to Mexico , where they perform at high altitudes due to the many high-altitude airfields they serve had to was important.

MacGills role in the company changed, was commissioned as the factory, the Hawker Hurricane - fighter aircraft for the Royal Air Force to build (RAF). The number of employees grew rapidly from around 500 to 4,500 - half of them women - at the end of the war. MacGill's main task during most of the war was to make the production workflow more efficient as the factory had to expand rapidly. MacGill was also responsible for developing ways to use the planes in winter. They introduced de-icing control and a system for attaching skis for landing in snow.

Elsie MacGill's portrayal as "Queen of the Hurricanes"

CC&F Hawker Hurricane X on a test flight over Fort William, Ontario

Their experiences with Factors Affecting mass production of airplanes (factors affecting the mass production impact of aircraft), summed up MacGill 1940 in a report. By the time production ceased in 1943, CC&F had made more than 1,400 Hurricanes. Her role in this successful series production made her so popular that a comic was published about her in the United States , which used her now famous nickname "Queen of the Hurricanes". Numerous popular stories about her were also circulated in the media, reflecting the fascination of the public with this engineer.

After production of the Hurricanes ended, CC&F looked for new orders and secured a contract with the US Navy to build SB2C Helldivers . This production did not go nearly as smoothly, however, and a continued stream of minor changes by Curtiss-Wright (which in turn also required the US Navy) caused the start of mass production to take a long time. MacGill and operations manager EJ (Bill) Soulsby were fired during this project. Initially rumors circulated that Soulsby had behaved harshly towards a group of senior officers who had been visiting a week earlier, but it later emerged that an affair between the two was the reason for the dismissals.

MacGill and Soulsby married in 1943 and moved to Toronto where they opened an aerospace engineering consultancy. In 1946 MacGill became the first woman technical advisor to the International Civil Aviation Organization , where she helped draft international aviation security rules for the development and production of commercial aircraft. In 1947 she also became chairwoman of the United Nations Stress Assessment Commission , becoming the first woman to ever chair a UN commission.

Women's rights

MacGill published a biography of her mother in 1955 entitled My Mother, the Judge: A Biography of Judge Helen Gregory MacGill . Her mother and grandmother's work in the suffragette movement inspired her to devote more and more time to women's rights in the 1960s.

From 1962 to 1964 she served as President of the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women's Club . In 1967 she was appointed to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada and was co-author of the 1970 report on the status of women in Canada. In a separate report she set out those of her views which differed from the majority of the members of the Commission. For example, she advocated the liberalization of abortion laws and wanted abortion to be removed from the penal code entirely. She was also a member of the Ontario Status of Women Committee , a subsidiary of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women . In 1971 she was awarded the Order of Canada for her work .

Next life

After a brief illness, MacGill died on November 4, 1980 in Cambridge , Massachusetts . On the occasion of her death, Shirley Allen, a Canadian member of the American female pilots' association Ninety Nines , described her as a brilliant thinker and exceptional Canadian who was neither gender nor disability deterred from using her skills in the service of the community and her country (“She had a brilliant mind and was recognized as an outstanding Canadian woman. Neither gender nor disability prevented her from using her talents to serve her community and country. ")

Quotes

About Her Engineering Degree: My attendance at the University of Toronto's engineering classes in 1923 caused some buzz.

Although I never learned to fly myself, I accompanied the pilots on all test flights of all aircraft I worked on - even the dangerous first flights.

MacGill once said: I have received many awards as an engineer, but I hope I will be remembered as an advocate for women's and children's rights.

Awards

MacGill's report "Factors Affecting the Mass Production of Aircraft" won the 1941 Gzowski Medal from the Engineering Institute of Canada . In March 1953, she made the American Society of Women Engineers an honorary member and named her Woman of the Year . This was the first time that this award went to someone outside the United States. She was awarded the Centennial Medal by the Canadian government in 1967, the Amelia Earhart Medal in 1975 by the Ninety Nines and her gold medal in 1979 by the Ontario Association of Professional Engineers . It was inducted into Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in 1983 and, upon its inception, into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in Ottawa in 1992 .

Since 2009, a Canadian subgroup of the Ninety Nines has presented the Elsie MacGill Northern Light Award annually to outstanding women in the aerospace industry .

literature

  • Richard I. Bourgeois-Doyle: Her Daughter the Engineer: The Life of Elsie Gregory MacGill. Ottawa: NRC Research Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-660-19813-2 .
  • John J. Green: "Obituary: Elizabeth (Elsie) Gregory MacGill, FC AS1, 1905–1980." , Unpublished text of the memorial address of November 26, 1980, University of Toronto Archives.
  • Sybil Hatch: Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers. Virginia Reston: American Society of Civil Engineers , 2006. ISBN 0-7844-0841-6 .
  • EMG MacGill: "Factors affecting mass production of airplanes" . Flight , v. 38, n. 1656, September 19, 1940, pp. 228-231.
  • EMG MacGill: My Mother, the Judge: A Biography of Judge Helen Gregory MacGill. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1955; Reprinted 1981, Toronto: PMA Books. ISBN 0-88778-210-8 .
  • Pamela Wakewich: "Queen of the Hurricanes: Elsie Gregory MacGill, aeronautical engineer and women's advocate." In: Sharon Anne Cook, Lorna R. McLean and Kate O'Rourke: Framing Our Past: Canadian Women's History in the Twentieth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006, first edition 2001. ISBN 978-0-7735-3159-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wakewich 2006, p. 396.
  2. ^ A b c d e "Elizabeth" Elsie "Gregory MacGill" , Library and Archives Canada. accessed on August 16, 2015.
  3. ↑ Bourgeois-Doyle 2008, p. 64.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Wakewich 2006, p. 397.
  5. ↑ Hatch 2006, p. 148.
  6. ↑ Kelly Saxberg, director. "Rosies of the North." Documentation from the National Film Board of Canada , 1999, accessed August 16, 2015.
  7. ↑ Fraser, David. Fraser, David: Elizabeth Muriel Gregory MacGill ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  8. ^ Morris, Cerise: Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 21, 2016 ..
  9. ↑ Wakewich 2006, p. 401.
  10. ↑ Fraser, David. Fraser, David: Elizabeth Muriel Gregory MacGill ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  11. ^ "Elsie MacGill." Canadian99s , accessed August 16, 2015.
  12. ↑ a b Wakewich 2006, p. 400.
  13. ↑ northernlightsaward.ca ( Memento of the original from August 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on August 16, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.northernlightsaward.ca

Web links

personal data
SURNAME MacGill, Elsie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES MacGill, Elizabeth Muriel Gregory
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian aircraft engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Vancouver
DATE OF DEATH November 4th 1980
Place of death Cambridge, Massachusetts