Nora Stanton Blatch Barney

In 1908, Nora Stanton married the prominent inventor Lee de Forest. The marriage however broke down quickly as her husband expected her to become a conventional housewife instead of pursuing her professional ambitions. The couple separated within a year of their marriage and divorced in 1911. One daughter was born from this marriage.

Her second marriage was to Morgan Barney, a marine architect, in 1919. This marriage resulted in the birth of her second daughter.

She remained active throughout her life and breathed her last on January 18, 1971.

Nora Stanton Blatch was born on September 30, 1883, in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England to William Blatch and Harriot Stanton. Harriot was a prominent suffragist. Nora’s maternal grandmother Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a pioneering women's rights activist.

As the daughter of a well-known feminist, Nora received a good education and was encouraged by her parents in her intellectual pursuits. In 1897, she began studying Latin and mathematics at the Horace Mann School in New York.

Her family moved to the United States in 1902. Nora was interested in studying engineering, a field women seldom ventured into in the early 20th century. She went to Cornell University and graduated in 1905 with a degree in civil engineering. The same year, she was accepted as a junior member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), becoming the first woman to do so.

Nora Stanton Blatch began her engineering career working for the New York City Board of Water Supply. She also worked for the American Bridge Company in 1905–06.

During this time she became acquainted with Lee De Forest, inventor of the radio vacuum tube, and entered into a romantic relationship with him. She then quit her job and took classes in mathematics at the Columbia University so that she could assist De Forest in his work.

She married De Forest in 1908 and began working for his company. On their honeymoon to Europe, the couple demonstrated De Forest’s radio equipment to potential buyers.

The marriage, however, did not last long as De Forest wanted her to set aside her professional aspirations and become a conventional housewife. This was not acceptable to the fiercely independent Nora Stanton and she left her husband. She was pregnant with their daughter at the time of their separation.

In 1909 she began working as an engineer for the Radley Steel Construction Company. She eventually divorced her husband and continued with her engineering career.

In 1905, Nora Stanton Blatch became the first woman to be accepted as a junior member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

She was posthumously advanced to ASCE Fellow status in 2015, an honor she was deprived of in her own lifetime.