Edith Clarke is the woman engineer ATS is honoring today for the U.S. National Women’s History Month. She was orphaned at an early age but used her inheritance, tenacity and brilliant mind to establish herself as a pioneer among women in engineering.(1)
Ms. Clarke was the first woman to earn an Electrical Engineering degree from MIT in 1918.  She invented the Clarke Calculator, a simple graphical device that solved equations involving electric current, voltage and impedance in power transmission lines. The device could solve line equations involving hyperbolic functions ten times faster than previous methods. She applied for a patent on the device in 1921.(2)
From 1919 to 1945, Ms. Clarke worked as an engineer at General Electric. In 1926 she was the first woman to present a paper before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the predecessor to IEEE.  In 1947 she became the first woman to teach Electrical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.(3)