Grandmother of the Web
Mary Lee Berners-Lee née Woods and her early work in Australia.
(12 March 1924- 29 November 2017)
Author: Barbara Ainsworth
Curator, Monash Museum of Computing History
Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia
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Mary Lee Woods, later known by her married surname Berners-Lee, had a long career as a computer programmer and is often given the title
“grandmother of the Web” through the work of her son, Tim Berners-Lee. However, she started her career as a mathematician and initially
thought she would like to work in the field of astronomy. She joined the team at Mount Stromlo Observatory, ACT, Australia in 1947 and
worked there until early 1951 when she decided that astronomy was not her chosen path after all. She returned to England and applied for a
position at Ferranti Ltd in their new computer department in the programming group led by the Australian computer scientist, John Makepeace
Bennett. This was the beginning of a long career associated with digital computing.
Photograph, Mary Lee Woods in the early 1940s.
Source:
University
of Birmingham
Mary Lee Woods’ Early Career in the UK
Mary Lee Woods studied mathematics at the University of Birmingham from 1942 to 1944 in a compressed degree during World War Two. She then went to work at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern which had a large group of scientists working on problems such as radar, radio developments and other projects to aid the war effort. She was able to return to university in 1946 to complete her degree.
Upon graduation, she was looking for a change from life in post-war Britain and wanted to pursue astronomy. She then read an article in Monthly Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society written by Dr. Richard Woolley (1906-1986) who was the Director of the Commonwealth Solar, later Mount Stromlo Observatory which is located in Canberra, ACT, Australia.[10] She wrote to Dr Woolley who responded and organised a place for her at Mount Stromlo. She used the subsidised government assistance scheme to travel to Australia by ship, the Orion, in 1947.[5]
Mary Lee Woods’ Career in Australia
Mary started work at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in 1947. Mount Stromlo is 19 km west of Canberra at an elevation of 768 metres and was fairly remote from the centre of the town until modern suburban encroachment. Opened in 1924, the site was like a small village with accommodation provided alongside the array of telescopes and offices. There were both married staff with families as well as young, single research and maintenance staff. Many staff lived in Canberra at the accommodation hostels provided by the Government and commuted by car up to the mountain to work on their various tasks.
Photograph: Mount Stromlo Observatory c.1955
Source: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Wikimedia Commons Link
The observatory at Canberra provided new opportunities for research of the sky in the southern hemisphere. Mary was assigned a task to apply the temperature-luminosity system of spectral classification to complete the first systematic survey of all bright southern stars.[7] In her interview with Abbate, she described this work. She had to examine a large set of photographic plates of stellar spectra taken by W.B. Rimmer. William Bolton Rimmer was Assistant Director of the Observatory prior to her arrival. He was originally from England and had been in Canberra since 1924. He had completed making a set of photographs of the southern sky but died in July 1945 before analysing them.[1] The photographs were placed into storage. Mary later found that no-one was prepared to take on the job of classifying them.
“And I discovered afterwards that it was decided to give it to me because no man would have the patience—and that was appalling. I didn’t discover that until after I’d left. I was told that.”[5]
Unfortunately, she found the work extremely unfulfilling. She did complete the classification of the photographs but did not have her work published until 1955. In 1950 her supervisor, Dr S.C.B. (Ben) Gascoigne[11], published a paper entitled “Relative gradients for 166 southern stars” which acknowledges using her as-yet unpublished data.[9] Mary’s work was finally published in 1955[15] with the delay apparently due to a lack of editors. The paper was edited by William Buscombe. The review in Nature summarises the paper,
“The Memoir deals with 520 bright stars and includes all the stars for which Rimmer's spectra are sufficiently clear, with the exception of a few composite spectra, and in addition to the data contained in nine pages of tabular matter, three pages are devoted to an introduction, procedure , notes on different types, absolute magnitudes, the catalogue, and acknowledgments.”[13]
Along with her work, Mary Lee Woods enjoyed her life on the mountain, went horse riding and camping in the Australian bush. She joined the Canberra Repertory Society and performed in plays.[2] She also joined the National Council of Women, acting as Secretary.[3] This Australian group historically represented women’s rights and equality in the home and at work. The ACT branch was founded in 1939.[12]
Opportunities for women working at Mount Stromlo in the 1940s
The staff at Mount Stromlo varied regularly with permanent astronomers and support staff as well as visiting astronomers. Women were mainly
employed as Assistants undertaking data reduction at Mount Stromlo in the 1940s. In the pre-digital age, they were often referred to as
“human computers”. Some international astronomers brought their wives to Mount Stromlo who were also trained in astronomy; for
instance, Priscilla Bok worked with her husband Dr Bart Bok. US astronomer Katherine Kron travelled with her husband Gerald Kron and both
worked at Mount Stromlo.[6]
Newspaper advertisement for female staff, Examiner, Launceston, Tasmania 11 Oct 1947 p7
Source Link
The 1947 advertisement for female staff to undertake mathematical data reduction in 1947 highlights the employment conditions at Mount Stromlo; the two levels include having a higher-level position requiring experience in reduction of astronomical observations in the Federal Fourth Division with title ASSISTANT and four positions at Grade 1 level which only stated the need for some mathematical ability. In the Federal public service, the Fourth Division was a clerical level with Third Division requiring professional qualifications. The pay rates were set as for all female staff in both divisions which was 75% of the male rate. However, as single females in a permanent position they were eligible for superannuation benefits. Married women were not eligible for permanent positions and were required to resign; they no longer had access to superannuation during their employment even on a temporary contract. The Assistants reduced data for analysis by the astronomers. Although integral to the work, the female staff are rarely acknowledged in publications.
Women at the Commonwealth Observatory had been involved in claims for equal pay since the mid-1940s. During the Second World War, the Women’s Employment Board (WEB) encouraged women into the workforce and ensured equal pay as their male counterparts. A group of women at the Mt Stromlo Observatory were employed to manufacturing optical lenses. They received 60% of the male rate plus an allowance. The case was the first listed by the Public Service Board under the Women’s Employment Act, 1942. In 1944 the case was in court and staff, including Dr Woolley, testified on the merits of female workers.[4] Women were able to receive equal pay for equal work during the war period. If they were employed at this date, that pay rate continued in peace time, for example Ruby Payne-Scott at the Division of Radiophysics, CSIRO. However, women employed after peace had wages reverted to lower percentage pay rates. This was the situation when Mary was working at Mount Stromlo.
There were varying numbers of women working as Assistants. ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics holds photographs from Beryl Hall which give some indication of their downtime on the mountain. It was cold but sunny and dry in winter although it even snowed sometimes. One longtime employee, Claire Beech recalled only 2 other women when she started but there are several archival photographs which show quite a number of women working at Mount Stromlo. See for instance the images attributed to Beryl Hall in their collection on-line. The images show a group of female staff relaxing outside the facilities in different seasons between 1949- 1950; the group includes Mary Lee Woods along with Dr Ben Gascoigne, Mary Kilmartin, Claire Beech, Brigid Watt-Brown, Mrs Siminov and Joyce Daly. Another photo includes Barbara Davson, Joyce Daly, Brenda Rees along with Mary on the grass. The photos give an impression of a happy workplace and, indeed, Claire Beech (1929-2020) married the astronomer Herman Wehner in 1955. Although she had to resign as a permanent employee as per public service rules, she was immediately re-employed and stayed until 1963 when she had her first child.[14]
Although Mary enjoyed the social aspects of her time at Mount Stromlo, she found the task given to her was unrewarding. This led to her resignation.
Post-Australian career of Mary Lee Woods
In January 1951 Mary Lee Woods returned to England. She had decided that astronomy was not her future. She sailed home on the George. At this stage, she had no knowledge of digital computing although she was aware of punched card tabulation. The first computer conference in Australia was in August 1951 and her supervisor Dr Gascoigne attended but Mary had already returned to England. By coincidence, Claire Beech had actually worked on a support team for EDSAC in England in 1949, before returning to Mount Stromlo, so it is surprising the topic of digital computing would not have been discussed by staff at the Observatory.[14]
Mary started the more well-known part of her career as a computer programmer at Ferranti in 1951. Upon return to England, she saw an advertisement for a computer programming position at Ferranti Ltd. She had no idea what this entailed. Having read a book on programming for two days, she attended an interview and was appointed to the team led by John Makepeace Bennett, an Australian computer scientist. She completed innovative programming tasks on the new computers built by Ferranti.
In 1954 she married Conrad Berners-Lee who also worked at Ferranti. She continued to work for Ferranti until she became pregnant. Leaving Ferranti in May 1955, her first son Tim was born in June 1955 and coincidentally her solar work was finally published that year. She returned to work when her children were at school and wrote programming manuals. Her work at Mount Stromlo was the beginning of a long career. [5, 8]
Mary’s time in Australia was brief but may have had some influence on her later decisions. She was involved with the National Council of Women which advocated for female equality and there was also some precedence at the Observatory for her later involvement in attaining equal pay at Ferranti. Equal pay for equal work in Australia was not officially enacted until 1972. The situation was similar in England until 1970. When Mary started working at Ferranti Ltd, the programmers at Ferranti were both men and women. The women were upset when they discovered there was a pay differential between staff members based on gender and not work. Although unsure of what to say, Mary was willing to represent female programmers at Ferranti and discussed their request for equal pay with management. A successful conversation. [5] Mary’s demands for equal pay at Ferranti Ltd were well ahead of the accepted variation between male and female employment rates.
Conclusion
Mary Lee Woods enjoyed her short career in Australia despite the unrewarding task assigned to her at Mount Stromlo. Unfortunately, the Mount Stromlo she knew was burnt out in bushfires in the mid-1950s and again in 2003. It is interesting to speculate if she had only stayed another year and had attended that first computer conference. Then she would have encountered CSIRAC and the beginnings of digital computing in Australia. She returned to England and joined the new computer industry at Ferranti Ltd. Her son Tim Berners-Lee is a noted computer scientist and is known as the “Father of the Web” and Mary accepted the name “Grandmother of the Web’. While an amusing title, she should be celebrated for her own work in programming during the 1950s and later contributions until her retirement in 1987.
Author’s note: this work is the result of discussions with Prof S. Lavington who alerted me to the Australian connection in Mary Lee Woods’ career.
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Canberra Times 3 July 1945 p.2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2634157?
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Canberra Times 23 June, 1948 p.4 23 Jun 1948 - "QUIET WEEK-END" WELL PLAYED BY REPERTORY SOCIETY - Trove
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Canberra Times 10 Jan 1951 p6 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2815893
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Canberra Times 28 Nov 1944 p3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2606585
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J. Abbate, "Oral History: Mary Lee Berners-Lee," IEEE History Center, 2001. [Online]. Available: https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Mary_Lee_Berners-Lee
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Arizona Archives Online. Lowell Observatory - Kron, Katherine Gordon [Online] Available: http://www.azarchivesonline.org/xtf/view?docId=ead/lowell/Kron_Katherine.xml
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W. Buscombe, "Research at the Mount Stromlo Observatory," Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, vol. 52, pp. 68-80, 1958. [Online]. Available: https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1958JRASC..52...68B/0000073.000.html
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G. Ferry, "Mary Lee Berners-Lee obituary," The Guardian. [Online]. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/23/mary-lee-berners-lee-obituary
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S. C. B. Gascoigne, "Relative gradients for 166 southern stars," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 110, 1950. [Online]. Available: https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1950MNRAS.110...15G
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S. C. B. Gascoigne, "Woolley, Sir Richard Van Der Riet (1906–1986)," vol. 18, Australian Dictionary of Biography: Melbourne University Press, 2012. [Online]. Available: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/woolley-sir-richard-van-der-riet-15390
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G. J. McCarthy, "Gascoigne, Sidney Charles Batholemew (1915-2010)," Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation (EOAS). [Online]. Available: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P000434b.htm
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M. Quartly and J. Smart, Respectable Radicals: A History of the National Council of Women of Australia 1896-2006. Melbourne, Australia: Monash University Publishing, 2015.
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Review., "Spectral types of southern stars," Nature February 16, 1957 voL 179 p.348 1955. [Online]. Available: https://www.nature.com/articles/179348c0.pdf
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J. Winternitz and C. Wehner, "Claire Wehner : former staff member at Mount Stromlo Observatory Interview Summary." [Online]. Available:
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/4c999ba7-b238-4be6-b9b9-be6a362d82b6/content -
M. L. Woods, "Spectral Types of Bright Southern Stars," Memoirs of the Commonwealth Observatory, Mount Stromlo, Canberra, vol. 12 (3), no. 2, May, 1955.
