Today in Technology History
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October 8
Mary Engle Pennington was born exactly 130 years ago, on October 8, 1872. She was America's foremost expert on the subject of refrigerating and preserving perishable foods.
Pennington studied at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1892, the university refused to give her a degree in chemistry even though she had completed the requirements -- only because she was a woman. She received a "certificate of proficiency" instead. Nevertheless, she kept studying, and the university awarded her a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1895, when she was only 22.
In 1898, Pennington began working at a city laboratory in Philadelphia where she studied methods for keeping milk from spoiling. She began inspections of dairy farms to make sure the milk supply was safe, and she convinced ice cream peddlers to adopt more sanitary practices.
In 1907, she was hired to work in the U.S. Agriculture Department. Her boss suggested she go by the name "M.E. Pennington" so officials wouldn't know she was a woman. She soon became head of the government's Food Research Laboratory.
Pennington studied cold-storage cars on trains by riding the rails for thousands of miles. She determined the right amount of humidity for preserving refrigerated food, and she helped to create government rules and laws regarding foods and drugs. She also wrote pamphlets about sanitary kitchen practices.
Dr. Pennington left the government in 1919, but she spent the next few decades working as a refrigeration engineer and consultant. A member of the American Chemical Society, she received that group's highest decoration for women in 1940. She died in 1953.
Related links:
Click here to read more about Pennington.
Click here to see a picture of Mary Pennington standing atop a railroad refrigeration car.
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