Kate Gleason

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Kate Gleason (born November 25, 1865 as Catherine Anselm Gleason in Rochester , New York ; † January 9, 1933 ibid) was an American engineer and business woman who was known for her job, in which mostly men worked, and her humanitarian commitment has been. She was also the first female member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and is considered the inventor of the prefabricated concrete house.

Life

Catherine Anselm Gleason was born in Rochester, New York, the first of four children. Her parents, William and Ellen McDermott Gleason, were immigrants from Ireland . The father owned a machine tool company, Gleason Works. This company later became a major gear exporter.

When Kate was eleven, her older stepbrother Tom died of typhus . This put the company, in which Tom was an important helper, in dire straits. At the age of twelve, Kate helped her father in the company, replacing her late stepbrother. In 1884 she was the first woman engineering specialty mechanical engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca , New York studied. She couldn't finish her studies because she had to work in the factory. She continued her studies at the Rochester Mechanics Institute, which was later renamed the Rochester Institute of Technology . She later became treasurer and saleswoman at Gleason Works. In 1893 she helped her father to optimize the gearboxes, which from then on could be produced more quickly. She traveled to Europe to open up additional sales markets. Today international sales amount to three quarters of sales.

Kate's mother, Ellen Gleason, was a friend of suffragette Susan B. Anthony . Kate Gleason supported women's suffrage after Anthony's death .

After a conflict with the family, Kate Gleason left the family business in 1913 and started working for the Ingle Machining Company . In 1914 she was the first woman to be accepted as a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and represented the society at the World Power Conference in Germany . From 1917 to 1918, she was as president of the First National Bank of East Rochester set after the previous president of the First World War had been called. From this position, Gleason became involved in humanitarian projects in Rochester and founded eight companies, including a construction company that built houses for the working class. She was later given the opportunity to work in South Carolina and California . After the First World War, she helped rebuild a city in France .

In 1920 Gleason bought a piece of land in Sea Islands , South Carolina to build low-cost housing developments for working-class families. Her project could only be realized after her death. In the process she developed, liquid concrete was poured into forms and erected after it had hardened so that a house could be built in a short time. The house with six rooms was sold under the name "Concrest" since 1921.

Personal

Gleason saw marriage as an obstacle to her professional career, which is why she was never married and had no children.

Death and aftermath

Gleason died of pneumonia on January 9, 1933 and was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Rochester. She left more than $ 1.4 million in donations to institutions, libraries, and parks in the Rochester area. Part received the Rochester Institute of Technology. The Kate Gleason College of Engineering , a RIT engineering school, was named after her. There is a bust of her in the stairwell . Kate Gleason Hall is a student residence at RIT. The Gleason Works company still exists and is closely associated with the RIT.

Quote

Fred H. Colvin , a former machinist and journalist, describes Kate Gleason in his memoir as:

“A kind of Madame Curie of machine tools […] Kate spent her youth learning her father's business from the ground up, both in the shop and in the field, so that when she branched out for herself about 1895 as a saleswoman for her father's gear-cutting machines, she knew as much as any man in the business. ”

literature

  • Fred H. Colvin: Sixty Years with Men and Machines. Bibliography .: McGraw-Hill, New York / London 1947, LCCN 47003762. (Reprinted with a foreword by Ralph Flanders in Lindsay Publications, ISBN 978-0-917914-86-7 , English).
  • Claudia Lanfranconi, Antonia Meiners: Smart business women. Sandmann, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-938045-22-0 ( online information )
  • Harold Ivan Smith: A Singular Devotion. Baker Pub Group, 1990, p. 291, ISBN 978-0-8007-5367-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e The Kate Gleason College of Engineering. (No longer available online.) RIT, archived from the original on December 2, 2012 ; Retrieved September 26, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Patents Girls: Kate Gleason. Retrieved September 19, 2012 .
  3. ^ A b Rochester Institute of Technology: The Source 2005-2006. Archived from the original on March 13, 2006 ; Retrieved January 5, 2008 .
  4. ↑ Kate Gleason - Engenieer Girl. Retrieved September 26, 2012 .
  5. ^ A b c Margaret B. Bailey: Kate Gleason: The Ideal Business Woman . In: Rochester Engineering Society (Ed.): The Rochester Engineer . 86, No. 6, January 2008, pp. 8-9.
  6. ↑ Kate Gleason. winningthevote, accessed September 26, 2012 .
  7. ^ Fred H. Colvin: Sixty Years with Men and Machines. 1947, p. 73.
personal data
SURNAME Gleason, Kate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gleason, Catherine Anselm (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American engineer
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochester , New York , United States
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1933
Place of death Rochester , New York , United States