It's been a while - the demands of a third-trimester, nearly-gestated thesis, and the setting-up of a new blog purely for historical kit-sewing for beginners, and so on...
But today is International Ada Lovelace Day 2010, and women in technology all over the world are blogging on the subject of women in technology.
That leaves me, dear Reader, with a slight problem as although I am fairly sure of my womanly charms, or at least of my womanly nature, I am not so steady on my certainty of technology. Electrical appliances work because the plug has a tiny imp on a bicycle with a dynamo and when you plug it into the wall-socket and press the switch, the imp pedals away like mad, thus generating electricity. This is necessary because I understand generation of electricity by dynamo (and by power-station) but not storage and transmission of energy. The National Grid transubstantiaties to a National Gridlock in my mind.
So how to blog about Women In Technology?
Historical Housekeepers were pretty damn technological. Over centuries they carried more scientific understanding and technological knowledge than most men, imo.
Chemistry and physics - also known as cooking and laundering. They didn't call it chemistry but they knew how leaving an acid and raw meat in conjunction for a bit meant the cheap tough meat was more tender to eat after cooking. They understood how different components in the hard tissues of animals react to heat, and that if you boil cheap meat rapidly you get indiarubber, but if you stew it gently you get tasty. They also knew how to prepare the bits we now throw away, the innards, the extremities - calf's head jelly, neat's foot jelly (neat = calf), sheep's heid broth, trotters and so on. They also understood the behaviour of different substances and different cloths for cleaning fabrics. No added synthesised chemicals, just water of different temperatures, milk, potatoes, the liquid from simmered rhubarb leaves, that kidn of thing. A treatment that worked on linen doesn't necessarily work on wool - oh yes, and you need to know about textiles and temperature and water because otherwise you get dinky little doll's clothes after boiling your woollens in the wash.
Anyone for advanced mathematics? Also known as needlework. Google geeky knitting for some of the amazing stuff ongoing with knitting and mathematics, genomes, Fibonacci and so on... I'm currently pondering a sweater knitted in two fractals which may not be possible but is worth a try. But no patterns for most housekeepers in the past, so they had to work out shaping, increases, decreases, patterning, all done in the round. Two stitches, plain and purl, and four needles and you get a silk stocking for a queen or you get a traditional water-resistant gansey for an East Coast fisherman. Making clothes - no patterns again so you need to understand how the pieces are built onto each other and then be able to see in the abstract and apply in the concrete in order to block the appropriate size and shape.
I could go on. I may well go on. I may come back and go on and on and on.
but I wanted to get something up, this morning, for Ada Lovelace and to show that women and technology have been alongside and intertwined for a very very long time.
I didn't even get onto preserving and pickling (osmosis anyone?), nor horticultural science... there's distilling (wahey!)... and of course some really interesting stuff around nutrition and medicine!
CELEBRATING ADA LOVELACE 2010
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