What do the Hoover Dam and the calculator have in common?

Edith Clarke was born in Maryland in 1883. By the time she was twelve years old, both of her parents had passed away.  She was sent to a boarding school, studied mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College and civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She interrupted her studies to become a human-computer for AT&T in 1912.  In 1919 she became the first woman to graduate from MIT with a master’s degree in electrical engineering.

 General Electric

While working part-time at General Electric she invented a new graphical calculator – the “Clarke Calculator” – that could easily solve equations with hyperbolic functions. Her calculator allowed analysts to solve key equations ten times faster than previous methods. At first, GE would not allow her to be an engineer, only a human calculator but after she left the company and traveled the world for a year, teaching physics at the Constantinople Women's College in Turkey, GE hired her as their first official female electrical engineer.

 What Edith Clarke did for General Electric

• Created more efficient methods of calculating equations

• Made it easier for engineers to manage large complicated power systems

• Figured out how to get the most power possible out of transmission lines

• Helped build the Hoover Dam!

Edith retired from GE in 1945 and became the first female professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas. She was the first woman to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers' (AIEE) annual meeting and in 1948 she became the first female Fellow of the AIEE.

 Edith Clark passed away October 29, 1959.