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Obres de Henrietta Heald

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Covering 8500 years of British history, this combines "eyewitness" reports of key events with numerous illustrations. The book focuses on wars, power struggles and politics as well as the stories of ordinary people and the changes they witnessed in everyday life over many centuries.
 
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DavidFranks | Feb 8, 2024 |
Its a biography of William Armstrong of the large Engineering firm in Elswick and of his businesses and science. The book has a little too much about Cragside and not enough for me about his technical achievements.
Much is made of his discovery of hydraulics and his exploitation of that in industry, but I am not so sure that his work in armaments counts as science. Inventiveness no doubt, but not original science. He did well in business, coming along at the same time as the UK needed to build up its navy and it was apparent that we needed better guns. He certainly threw himself into their manufacture, although what this actually involved was not explained, beyond uncertain references to wrought iron wires.
The author has interesting stuff about people's reaction to science, and how it altered as the century progressed. At first delight in the discoveries of Watt, Brunel and Armstrong but later concern about the resultant slums, and destruction and undermining of morals, together with worries about our "Origin of Species" and Essays and Reviews.
Armstrong and the other owners came out badly in the 9 hours strike of 1871 ending the friendly or even paternalistic relationship between the hands and the bosses. But till then he had been very supportive of his workers education and very involved in Newcastle charities.
His marriage was happy but childless, and his chosen successor made a mess of his inheritance. Armstrong seemed to get distracted by the Bamburgh folly, his photos of electricity and of course by Cragside; but in his 80s there was surely no need for him at the works. Could he have given better thought to his industry's future, or do these things never last?
… (més)
 
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oataker | Jul 16, 2023 |
As World War one started the drain of men to go and fight began to affect the ability of factories to produce the ordinance and supplies that the army needed to fight. They turned to the women to work in the factories, but some would not just do the simple repetitive tasks that are needed to make simple items, they would step up and learn the trade so they could construct places and some went onto design new things.

By the end of the war though, the UK government and unions wanted to return to the previous status quo and parliament was set to pass the Restoration Of Pre-War Practices Bill which would mean that any women employed by engineering companies who had not employed women in that role would have to sack them or face a fine. This went against what was happening in wider society, as some women were just starting to get the vote and play a more meaningful role in a society that had changed after the war.

There were some women who were not prepared to take this, in particular, Katharine and Rachel Parsons and Caroline Haslett, who, in 1919 created the Women’s Engineering Society. They had several aims, but the core focus was to ensure that women's rights were protected and promoted and they really had their work cut out. The book is mostly about the two main women involved in society and how one became the leading professional engineer of her age and the other whose life ended in tragedy.

However there is much more to this book than just these two characters, there are stories of women who created their own women-only engineering businesses, improved worker safety, became marine engineers and mechanics, pilots and racing drivers and engine designers. It was really hard to make inroads against the status quo, but they stuck at it and with the impending war, they were going to become useful once again.

Henrietta Heald has written a really good book about the history of the Women’s Engineering Society and about two much-maligned sectors of society, women and engineers. It is very readable and full of details and anecdotes about all sort of female engineers and their achievements and it is very timely. My father was an engineer during his career and worked in the navy and was then an inspector for pressure vessels. I am an engineer too having studied, electronic and then mechanical engineering and have worked in defence, hi-fi and lighting industries. For me, this is an important book as my daughter is just about to embark on her apprenticeship as an engineer for a large local company and she will be accompanied by two other girls in this years intake approaching near to the 30% target they have set by 2030.

For those want to see just what women are capable of in STEM then have a look at this thread
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PDCRead | Apr 6, 2020 |
If you remember 'The year book 19XX : a record of the events, developments and personalities of 19..' Published up until the mid seventies by Grolier. Then this is a very similar product, albeit in a much slimmer format (the Grolier volumes were built like old telephone directories or Church Bibles!). However, the meat of what happened during 1989 is still there! I even found a couple of news worthy articles that I took part in (now long since forgotten); so, that was quite amazing!

I have to give this 4.5 stars because, I could not find much that was not included - even if only as a foot-note. The missing 1/2 star was only because not much could beat the old Grolier Year Books for content value.

Sadly, by putting everything from here on, on-line as digital content; we are inadvertently assuring that in a thousand years all this data will be lost, and all future generations will know about who we were will end when the last of books like this one were published. A grim thought that nothing which we do now will be remembered by our great, great grandchildren. But, that's progress for you I guess.
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Sylak | Apr 1, 2015 |

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Obres
13
Membres
152
Popularitat
#137,198
Valoració
4.1
Ressenyes
4
ISBN
22
Llengües
2

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