Today in History – June 17, 2011 – women of Saudi Arabia launch a civil disobedience campaign to fight for the right to drive automobiles. One example is Jajla Barasain (photo upper right), who is pursuing a master’s degree in business administration in the U.S. and was home for her summer break. She said that the support from social media sites by both men and women motivated her to participate. Her reluctant father sat next to her in the passenger seat. In a recent NPR interview she says: “When I read what people were saying on Twitter, I decided that I have to do something about it . . . I have to say something and take an action today because it’s a very important day.”In another story, 39-year old Maha al-Qahtani , an IT specialist, packed an overnight bag and folded prayer rug before she left to drive in case she was thrown in jail.

The pressure to launch a campaign for the right to drive began when 32-year-old Mana al-Shariff was imprisoned in May 2011 after she drove in Riyadh. Activists compare her to Rosa Parks and the analogy is apt in that she inspired similar action by others through her  “women2drive” internet campaign when she first posted a video of her driving. Six members of the U.S. Congress were inspired to author an open letter in support of the campaign. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined the twitter campaign with: “Beep beep and solidarity to the Saudi women & supporters challenging the driving ban!” Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, issued a statement: “Not allowing women behind the wheel in Saudi Arabia is an immense barrier to their freedom of movement, and severely limits their ability to carry out everyday activities as they see fit, such as going to work or the supermarket, or picking up their children from school”.  Others are blogging on whether Saudi Women’s driving protest will usher in more social reforms. This muslim female blogger captures this spirit with: Women To Drive – Let’s Go!.

Ironically there is no formal law against women driving, rather the prohibition is embodied in religious fatwahs that include restrictions on what women can do and is enforced by the “religious police” called the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. As women can not legally get a drivers license in Saudi Arabia, I suppose a legitimate arrest might be for driving without a license. I note that some of the drivers were using international drivers licenses obtained outside the country. Saudi Arabia is the only country “banning” women to drive and King Abdullah did try to reverse this ban a few years ago, but met too much resistance. There was some confusion on the legal aspects, however, and city police were not sure what they should do during the June 17 protest. One issued a ticket and two women endured brief detentions, followed by immediate releases. As far as I can tell all of the women drivers were were heavily covered and were accompanied by a male guardian.

One must view this action in the context of other constraints on women’s mobility in Saudi Arabia. Women are not allowed to travel on their own without some kind of male guardian: husband, brother, or even a son. During my first visit there, I convinced my family to come with me. I was issued a document by the Saudi embassy verifying that I was allowed to travel alone in case I got stopped (my family didn’t really want to go with me while I was conducting business). I found to my distress in trying to go to one meeting that women are not allowed to flag down a cab, but they can hire regular personal drivers and these drivers seem to take the role of a male guardian. A luxury for the rich, this option is not open for women of more modest means. Even if one did not want to grant women the freedom of mobility, in general, proponents argue that women drivers might be valuable for family emergencies.

This recent action reminds me of a story I once read about how the bicycle was a technology that provided freedom to Victorian women. The bicycle provided women exercise and motivated more practical clothes. More importantly, the cycle allowed woman to travel much farther then before without being under the surveillance of guardian husband. Some claim that the suffrage movement greatly benefited by the ability of women to organize and attend meetings and rallies without their husband’s knowledge or approval. A good book on this analysis is Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom by Susan Macey.

I first visited Saudi Arabia in January of 2009 as part of a collaborative project between the University of California at Berkeley and the newly formed King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). My contribution focused on research on sustainability and gender equity through design innovations as part of our CARES (Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability) project. In order include gender equity considerations in this project, I also partnered with a top quality private women’s college Dar Al-Hekma, nearby in Jeddah. We named our project “Estidama”, the Arabic word for sustainability.

During my January 2009 visit, I gave talks at Dar Al-Hekma (photos above) and visited the construction of buildings at KAUST. My daugher joined me at Dar Al-Hekma, but my husband and son could only visit after 4:00 pm when the students left for home. I donned an Egyptian-style abaya as it allowed more freedom with a full opening in the front. Non-Muslim women do not have to wear the hijab, but I carried a scarf with me just in case. Although I was told that the abaya was not required if I dressed modestly, the hotel I was in specifically said it was required and the one day I ventured out without it I felt daggers in my back. When wearing the abaya, for the most part, I was treated with dignity and with utmost hospitality.  While I was at DAH and KAUST, my family went snorking in the Red Sea and visited the camel and falcon market (photos below).

One question I did not get answered was whether women could ride camels alone. I was told that oil-rich Saudis do not really ride camels anymore, except for sport. Although when riding down the highway in Jeddah (with a personal guide), we stopped to ask a Sudanese camel herder to milk a camel and bring us fresh milk (photos below). I was told that women in remote parts of Saudi Arabia do drive out of necessity. The problem appears to be the major cities with active religious police.

I love this story as it illustrates how technology (mobility and social media) can be a vehicle of social change (pun intended). I am interested in how far this civil disobedience goes if women are not give more freedom in general. I found the women of Saudi Arabia to be smart and motivated to make the world a better place. Will they still need to bring a male guardian with them as a passenger if they can drive? Will they be safe driving alone? Will they have a wider range of jobs they can drive to?

Today in History – June 16, 1963,  Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space aboard the Soviet Union’s Vostok 6. At the time, Tereshkova had completed three days in space, more than the flight time of all the American astronauts put together.

Tereshkova’s story has many gendered aspects. The Soviets seem to have used the female cosmonauts as a publicity stunt. Tereshkova was one of five women picked for this program; the least qualified in regards to higher education. Premier Khrushchev made the final crew selection, picking Tereshkova as she embodied the qualities expected of the New Soviet Woman – a reliable communist, a factory worker, and came from a humble background. He called her a “good girl”. In spite of technical issues during the flight, she proved to be quite able.

Tereshkova has received a number of medals and distinctions, including two Orders of Lenin; recognition as a Hero of the Soviet Union; the United Nation Gold Medal of Peace; the Simba International Women’s Movement Award; and the Joliot-Curie Gold Medal. In 2000, she was named “Greatest Woman Achiever of the Century” award by the International Women of the Year Association.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Valentina Tereshkova and space exploration. For related educational resources, visit the Aerospace Engineering Education or Engineering Diversity disciplinary communities.

Today in History – June 12, 1979 – Gossamer Albatross crosses the English Channel. The Gossamer Albatross aircraft was designed by Jack MacCready to fly long distances with a human pedaling pilot as the only source of power.  The historic June 12, 1979 flight across the English Channel was piloted by Bryan Allen, covering a distance of 22.25 statute miles (35.6 km) in 2 hours and 49 minutes.

A century earlier, John J. Montgomery makes first controlled “heavier than air” glider flight at Wheeler Hill, California. He sails a distance of 603 feet at an altitude of about fifteen feet. He continued to perfect the design by making and testing modifications. In 1894, he published a summary of this work in Octave Chanute’s “Progress in Flying”; a book that the Wright Brothers are reported to have read. Montgomery was the first person to use the term “aeroplane” and was granted the first “aeroplane” patent in 1906. Montgomery died  testing one of his powered designs for Vicor Loughead (later Lockheed) in 1911. Norman Ward reconstructed the 1883 Montgomery Glider shown in the photograph above right.

In 1977, Paul MacCready’s Gossamer Condor was the first human powered flight around a figure eight. MacCready and his team won the $50,000 Kremer Prize and captured the world’s attention. Bryan Allen maintained a head-height during the 7 1/2 minute figure eight flight.

British millionaire Henry Kremer and the Royal Aeronautical Society offered the Kremer Prize to the “designer who could create a human-powered flying machine”. After 18 years of no winners,  MacCready’s Gossamer Condor made history in 1977 when it became the first human-powered vehicle to achieve a sustained flight, performing a complex maneuver.

The Gossamer Condor is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. MacCready went on to win a number of other flight firsts and also developed the solar-powered Sunraycer that competed in a race across Australia. His 1990 electric car, built in collaboration with General Motors, resulted in the Impact electric car that could accelerate from zero to 60 mph in eight seconds.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on John Montgomery, Paul MacCready, Gossamer Condor and gliders. Or view curricular resources at the Aerospace Engineering Education Community site.

Today in History – June 9, 1931 – Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard patents a rocket-powered airplane.

Goddard is perhaps best known for the first liquid-fueled rocket,  a very small contraption connected to tanks with gasoline and liquid oxygen, and sitting atop a frame 10 feet tall. It screeched into the air for a few seconds, reaching an altitude of about 40 feet and crashing down about 200 feet from its launch site. Goddard wrote in his diary that the rocket “looked magical as it rose.”

In a liquid rocket, stored fuel and stored oxidizer are pumped into a combustion chamber where they are mixed and burned. The combustion produces great amounts of high-pressure exhaust gas, which produces thrust. Today’s missiles and spacecraft are launched on liquid-propelled rockets based on Goddard’s groundbreaking experiments. In memory of Goddard’s work, a major space science laboratory, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, was established on May 1, 1959.

Also on this date in 1966, NASA launched Gemini VIII, the 12th manned American space flight and first space docking with the Agena Target Vehicle. Neil Armstrong, who was a recent test pilot assigned to the X-15 rocket airplane before becoming an astronaut in 1962, made his first space flight in 1966 on Gemini VIII with David R. Scott. The two men performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space — the Gemini VIII and an uninhabited Agena rocket. This was the world’s first orbital docking. David Scott was to spend two hours outside of the spacecraft, but subsequent events canceled the planned space-walk. A thruster malfunction caused the Gemini VIII capsule, still docked to the Agena, to roll continuously. The crew undocked from the Agena while rotating at a rate of 60 RPM. The only way to stop the motion was to use the capsule’s reentry control thrusters, which meant that Armstrong and Scott had to cut short their mission and make an emergency return to Earth 10 hours after launch.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on Goddard, rockets and aerospace engineering. For curricular resources, visit the Aerospace Engineering Education community site.

Today in History – June 8, 1940 – The discovery of element 93, neptunium (symbol Np), a decay product of uranium-239, was announced by Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson working at the University of California at Berkeley. Neptunium was named after the planet Neptune and, at the time, was the first element heavier than uranium. Such elements with stable isotopes are called transuranium elements. McMillan was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951 for the discovery of Neptunium. McMillan was a member of the Radiation Laboratory under Professor E.O. Lawrence with research on nuclear reactions and their products, and the design and construction of cyclotrons and other equipment. He succeeded Lawrence as director of what is now the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1958. McMillan was also a member of the Faculty in the Department of Physics at Berkely from 1935 till his retirement in 1974. Today, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), named after Ernest Lawrence, has taken the lead in a diverse range of projects in particle physics and energy, such as environmental energy technologies.

See the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on radiactive elements, particle physics and the cyclotron or visit the Nuclear Engineering Education or the Chemical Engineering Education community sites for more information.

Today in History – June 5, 1977 – Apple II goes on sale. Steve Wozniak designed the Apple II personal computer that was released in 1977, featuring a central processing unit (CPU), keyboard, floppy disk drive, and a $1,300 price tag. The Apple II launched the personal computer revolution. He left Apple in 1981 and went back to the University of California at Berkeley and finished his degree in electrical engineering and computer science there. Since then, he has been involved in various business and philanthropic ventures, including improving computer capabilities in schools.

So how do you build one of the first personal computers? Wozniak says when he teaches Personal Computer 101 he asks students to go to the Apple I Owners Club, founded in 1977 by Joe Torzewski. The site contains over 120 pages detailing the Apple I computer. It shows you what it was like to actually buy and assemble one. If you’ve never seen an Apple I or II, check this site out and see how the personal computer revolution began. Want to know more, read Wozniak’s book: iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It.

Check out the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on Apple computers and history of computing. For more educational resources, see our electrical engineering education, computer science education and computer engineering education community pages. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Today in History – June 4, 1937 – First shopping cart invented by Sylvan Nathan Goldman. Goldman was a retailer who wanted his shoppers to be able to carry more goods to the cash register and increase sales. The standard wicker basket limited the number of purchases a shopper could conveniently carry. In particular, women could not both carry heavy loads and keep track of children. As the story goes, one evening working late he thought of putting together two ordinary folder chairs on wheels as a vehicle that could be pushed around the store.

After many failed prototypes, a wheeled cart called the “folding basket carrier” was ready to be tested. Goldman launched a creative advertising campaign (see center image) that showed the problems with the old-fashioned basket and promoted “the newest innovation in shopping! Now at your Standard Food Stores.” The ad then described the joys of winding your way through a spacious food market without having to carry a cumbersome shopping basket on your arm. . . . Just pick up your items from the shelves. They will be checked and placed in your car without having to carry a single item.”

Alas shoppers were not interested in this latest innovation and only the elderly used the new carts. One woman said: “No more carts for me. I have been pushing enough baby carriages. I don’t want to push anymore”. And the men would say, “You mean with my big strong arms I can’t carry a darn little basket like that?” And he wouldn’t touch it. It was a complete flop.“

Goldman turned things around by hiring fake shoppers, men and women, of different ages to start using the carts. The idea was to show that the carts were of value to the young and strong. It worked! Today there are over 1 million shopping carts manufactured every year using the same basic design.

IDEO’s Nightline challenge on ABC changed forever our vision of what the shopping cart could be. For the television show, IDEO was given one week to create a new innovative concept in shopping carts. After doing user studies, creative brainstorming and several prototypes, IDEO’s concept cart (shown above) considered “maneuverability, shopping behavior, child safety, and maintenance cost. The nestable steel frame lacks sides and a bottom to deter theft, and holds removable plastic baskets to increase shopper flexibility, help protect goods and provide a method to promote brand awareness. A dual child seat uses a swing-up tray for a play surface, and a hole provides a secure spot for a cup of coffee or a bunch of carnations.

Alas the IDEO cart seems to have suffered the same adoption problems as the original. The closest cart I have seen was at IKEA in Emeryville, California where a cart with hanging bags was adopted.

For more information design education, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on engineering design, human-centered design and industrial design. Or visit the Mechanical Engineering Education and the Engineering Management community sites. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Also on this date in 1989 was the Massacre in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government was not able to control the students fighting for democracy and ordered the infantry and tanks to attack the unarmed protestors. It is estimated that 7,000 died in the massacre. The courage of the Chinese students forever changed China.

Today in History – July 4, 1997 – Launched on December 4, 1996, Pathfinder impacted the surface of Mars on July 4, 1997 at a velocity of  18 m/s (40 mph) and then bounced into the air 15 times at a maximum height of  15 meters (50 feet), before rolling and coming to rest  1 km from the initial impact site. The lander and landing site was named the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.  Pathfinder was designed, built and operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA. 

The Sojourner Rover (above left) carried by Pathfinder rolled onto the Mars’ surface two days later on July 6. Click on the image above right to see a video of its initial positioning.

The project ended on March 10, 1998 when the lander failed to respond to communicate with controllers at JPL. The mission operated three times longer than its original 30-day planned lifetime. I was honored to have served on the Advisory Board for the Engineering Division at JPL and was impressed with their “faster, better, cheaper” approach to space exploration.

The images from Pathfinder-Sojourner are spectacular, ranging from videos of Martian sunsets (click on image above left to see movie), data on the composition of the Martian rocks and the role of water on Mars. Quoting from a NASA press release of June 29, 1998:

The current assessment of data from this instrument suggests that all of the rocks studied by the rover resemble a type of volcanic rock with a high silicon content known on Earth as andesite, covered with a fine layer of dust. All of the rocks appear to be chemically far different from meteorites discovered. on Earth that are believed to have come from Mars.

Now take the quiz: What happened to the Pathfinder on Mars?  http://bit.ly/Pathfinderquiz

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on the Pathfinder mission and space exploration. For related educational resources, visit the Aerospace Engineering Education, Engineering Mechanics Engineering Education, Computer Engineering Education or the Mechatronics Engineering Education Community sites.

The Engineering Pathway profiles Weili Dai, Co-Founder of the Marvell Technology Group, Ltd and Vice President and General Manager of Communications and Consumer Business,  as our hero for Asian-Pacific Heritage month. A graduate of UC Berkeley’s Computer Science program, she is considered one of the most successful women entrepreneurs in the world. Newsweek named her one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World“. She also has the distinction of being the only female co-founder of an American semiconductor company.

Marvell is a leading global semiconductor company,  providing expertise in integrated analog and digital chip design with a large portfolio of broadband communications and storage solutions. The company started in 1995 and has grown from a three-person (Weili Dai and her husband Sehat Sutardja and his brother Pantas Sutardja), family-funded start-up to a multi-billion-dollar technology company with  7,000 employees. In 2004 Dai and the Sutardjas were recognized by the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Weili Dai explains the importance of Marvell using a pizza analogy in a CNN interview: “We are the pizza dough. The tomato sauce are different operating systems…and the toppings are the applications. Essentially we are the one-stop shop providing the guts of the electronic products.”

In 2012 Weili Dai was selected to give the 2012 College of Engineering’s Commencement speech. I had the pleasure to sit on the stage with the other faculty in the College of Engineering to hear her speech and recognize our graduates and their families and friends. Her youngest son, Nicholas, graduated this year with a degree in electrical engineering. She talked about the joy of seeing her first son Christopher graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in electrical engineering in 2010 and reflected on holding him in her arms when he was one month old when her husband Sehat Sutardja received his doctorate in electrical engineering on the same stage.  I was inspired by the talk as were the students, who gathered around her afterwards.

Weili proudly considered herself a geek in college because she was focused on her academic work.  Yet she emphasized the importance of teamwork for success in industry and used her experience as a semi-professional basketball player to illustrate this concept. “You have to be strategic in teamwork. You must always keep your eyes on the goal (getting the basketball in the net) while keeping your eyes wide open to everything happening around you. When you pass the ball you have to see the big picture and find the right opportunity in order to win.” She offered to stage a basketball game with the UC Berkeley student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers in future.

In a follow-up interview I had with Weili Dai recently at her offices at Marvell, she emphasized that women can lead the tech industry but they need to “embrace their inner geek“ by developing their technology skills and leveraging their differentiators.   For example, Weili emphasized to me that women are particularly suited for the teamwork and human-centered designs skills needed to produce successful twenty-first century technologies. She reflected that “they can pull in their family experiences and their natural talent for connectivity.” She also believes engineers with a sense of style provide an edge for women; clearly she is the ultimate role model for all of these qualities.

What’s her future vision for Marvell? She envisions  R&D playing a larger role: “In the next wave of our technology will be to develop smart devices that have pipes to pump the real world through digital interfaces in 3D environments.” She envisions Marvell technologies providing “one stop shopping” for the human-centric technologies, such as for tangible surfaces for video communication or the next generation of smart homes.” As part of this strategy Marvell just recently entered in a partnership with Google to transform TVs into smart devices that can provide a connected multimedia communication experience in the home, at work and while traveling.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Computer Science. For related educational resources, visit the Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and disciplinary community or the Teamwork and the Broadening Participation in Computing interdisciplinary communities.

Today in History – May 30, 1932 – Amelia Earhart is first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She was one of the most famous women aviators in history. Earhart worked as a nurse’s aide in a military hospital in Canada during WWI and became a social worker after attending college. She took her first flying lesson on January 3, 1921, and managed to save enough money to buy her first plane soon afterwards. Although not an engineer, Amelia Earhart inspired many of us to go into engineering and to appreciate cutting-edge technologies. Although Amelia Earhart lived in a time when women were rarely associated with technology, she distinguished herself by bettering both women’s and men’s aviation records.

Check out the Engineering Pathway‘s many educational resources on women in engineering, women in information technology, women inventors and gender equity. One of my favorite resources is FairerScience, with practical advice on how to develop gender equitable classrooms and practices in math, science and engineering.

For a more indepth analysis of the issues associated with gender equity in our faculties and recommended solutions, read our “most commented” resource – the National Academies’ Beyond Bias and Barriers report. My editorial on the report was published in ASEE Prism, November 2006, vol. 16 (3). We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions as well.

Also on this date in history in 1898, Krypton is discovered.