Cochran, Arrol Johnston and the Caledon – building boilers, cars, ships – and female engineers
Considering Scotland’s pre-eminent position in global engineering in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it is sadly rather poorly represented in terms of numbers of women who went from that period to become engineers.
However, as this talk will show us, Scotland did produce a select group of pioneering women in engineering from the Annan boilermakers, Cochran, the Dumfries car makers, Arrol Johnston and the Dundee shipbuilders, Caledon. This talk will look at the stories of how such women were trained, worked and ‘formed’ into influential engineers of their time.
Dr Nina Baker has had a varied career, having become a merchant navy deck officer on leaving school and later taken an engineering design degree in her 30s, from the University of Warwick. She then gained a PhD in concrete durability from the University of Liverpool. She has lived with her family in Glasgow since 1989, working variously as a materials lecturer in further education and as a research administrator and, until 2017, as an elected city councillor. Now retired from all that, her interest in promoting STEM careers for girls has led her to become an independent researcher, mainly specialising in the history of women in engineering.
