Meet Edith Clarke, the first female electrical engineer in the U.S.

Edith Clarke

Read about a woman whose impeccable credentials in the U.S. electric power industry include a major contribution to developing the Hoover hydroelectric project.

Edith Clarke may not be a name that rolls off your tongue when discussing women in hydropower, but she was an impressive and prolific influence, beyond hydroelectricity, in the U.S. electric power industry in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

Although her significant accomplishments have been a bit genericized over time, she was a trailblazer in electrical engineering.

Read on to learn some impressive facts and see how Clarke influenced hydro in the U.S. and why Hydro Review celebrates her accomplishments during Women’s History Month (#womenshistorymonth #womensupportingwomen).

Background and career

Clarke was born in 1883 in Maryland. She was educated first at Vassar College, where she studied mathematics and astronomy. She then worked as a math and physics teacher and as a “computer” at AT&T, supporting the engineers working to build the first transcontinental phone line, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. At that time, computers were humans who performed math calculations by hand.

Clarke studied civil engineering and electrical engineering at two universities before enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1918, becoming the first woman to earn a master of science degree in electrical engineering from the institution in 1919. Her master’s thesis was entitled, “Behavior of a lumpy artificial transmission line as the frequency is indefinitely increased.”

However, Clarke was unable to find work as an electrical engineer and instead started at General Electric as a supervisor of computers in the turbine engineering department. During that time, she is reported to have worked to calculate the mechanical stresses in high-speed turbine rotors.

She left GE in 1921 to teach at the Constantinople Women’s College in Turkey, reportedly because she was not allowed to do electrical engineering work. In 1922, Clarke was offered a position as an electrical engineer in GE’s central station engineering department.

Between 1923 and 1951, Clarke is reported to have authored or co-authored 19 technical papers. She filed her patent for “a graphical calculator that greatly simplified the calculations necessary to determine the electrical characteristics of long electrical transmission lines” while working at GE. Her Clarke Calculator was patented in 1925.

Clarke also received patents in 1927 and 1944, the first for electric power transmission and the second for an electric circuit. GE reported that, in her electrical engineer position, Clarke “made significant contributions to symmetrical component and circuit analysis theory and to the solution of long-distance power transmission problems.”

Hydropower ties

For hydropower, her “claim to fame” is that, while she worked for GE, Clarke contributed to the design and construction of Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona on the Colorado River. The dam impounds water for a powerhouse with a capacity of 2,078 MW (today).

Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam in the U.S.

The Hoover Dam hydroelectric project was constructed between 1931 and 1936. The U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, owner and operator of the project, said it is “a testimony to a country’s ability to construct monolithic projects in the midst of adverse conditions.”

Built during the Depression, the dam is a National Historic Landmark and has been rated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of America’s Seven Modern Civil Engineering Wonders.

Clarke contributed her electrical expertise to develop and install the turbines that generate hydropower at Hoover, according to DOE. However, the exact nature of this contribution is not clear. GE reports on its website that, in 1936, a GE 82,500-kVa turbine was first brought online at Hoover Dam. The hydroelectric generators GE provided for the project weighed 2 million pounds.

It is also reported that Clarke contributed to the design of other dams and hydroelectric projects in the western U.S., but no details on the specific facilities are readily available.

Returning to teaching

Clarke’s other accomplishments include writing Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems, a two-volume textbook on power system losses and the performance of electrical equipment, which she authored in 1943. After retiring from GE, Clarke was appointed to the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 1947; she taught there for 10 years.

In 1948, Clarke told The Daily Texan: “There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there’s always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work.” That same year, she became the first female fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The Society of Women Engineers gave Clarke a lifetime achievement award in 1954, citing her contributions to the field “in the form of her simplifying charts and her work in system instability.”

Clarke died in 1959 and has been recognized and commemorated in several ways, including a profile in “Women in Engineering: Pioneers and Trailblazers,” published in 2009 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

And Clarke was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015 for her invention of the Clarke Calculator. According to NIHF, Clarke was the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the U.S., the first woman to be a full voting member of what would become IEEE and the first woman in the U.S. to be a full-time professor of electrical engineering.

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