Finding Ada - Ada Lovelace Day and Dame Caroline Haslett

Okay so my entry to finding Ada is a week late : 

This year I entered Dame Caroline Haslett a pioneer for women in the Electrical and professional world in the early 20th Century.  She was the very first secretary to the Women's Engineering Society in 1919 - just six years after Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under Anmer at the 1913 Derby. 

Dame Caroline's IET biography also states

She became Chairman of the Council of Scientific Management in the Home and presented papers on home management in various countries.

While her Electrical legacy appears to be concerned primarily with the domestic use of electricity, she was active in engineering and electrical engineering at a time of great change, gaining her initial training during the First World War and going on to co-found the now disbanded Electrical Association for Women which existed from 1924 until 1987.  

EAW's aim was to promote the use of electricity as a safe domestic tool. The first entirely experimental public electricity supply was made available to subscribers in Godalming, Surrey, UK around 1881, with the first commercial electricity centre being built at Holborn Viaduct the following year.  The 1925 Electricity Supply Act gave rise to the National Grid system in the UK so Dame Caroline Haslett, between the EAW and the Women's Engineering Society, was well placed to encourage and promote the use of electricity in the home.

Dame Caroline was the only female member of the British Electricity Authority from 1947 until 1956.

In this age, some might find Dame Caroline's emphasis on the domestic use of electricity disappointing but she influenced generations of people, educated countless  women on the new technology of their time, was active in the Engineering profession throughout her life - being the sole female member on the Council of the British Institute of Management and the first woman to hold the office of Chairman of the British Electrical Development Association during 1953-1954 as well as acting in an advisory role in women's training for the Ministry of Labour during the Second World War.

Dame Caroline's continued level of activity throughout her entire life certainly deserves a mention when looking for Ada.