{{short description|American engineer and businesswoman}} {{good article}} {{Use mdy dates|date=March 2024}} {{Infobox person | name = Kate Gleason | image = Kate Gleason portrait (1890-1910).jpg | alt = | caption = Gleason circa 1890–1910 | birth_name = Catherine Anselm Gleason | birth_date = November 24, 1865{{Efn|name="birthday"|Biographer Janis Gleason claims Kate Gleason was born on November 24.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=4}} Gleason's obituary in ''The New York Times'' gives November 24 as her birth date while her obituary in the Rochester ''Times-Union'' gives November 25.<ref name="NYTobit" /><ref name="Times-Union" />}} | birth_place = Rochester, New York, US | death_date = {{Death date and age|1933|1|9|1865|11|24}} | death_place = Rochester, New York, US | resting_place = Rochester Riverside Cemetery | resting_place_coordinates = | alma_mater = Cornell University | other_names = | known_for = | occupation = Engineer, businesswoman }}
'''Catherine Anselm Gleason''' (November 24, 1865{{Efn|name="birthday"}} – January 9, 1933) was an American engineer and businesswoman known for her accomplishments in the field of engineering and for her philanthropy. Starting at a young age, she managed several roles in the family-owned Gleason Works in Rochester, New York, and later used her experience to launch a successful career in finance and construction. Through a combination of formal education and work experience with the Gleason Works, she earned recognition as an engineer and was elected to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1914 as their first woman member. Gleason is the namesake of the Kate Gleason College of Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
==Early life and education== Catherine Anselm Gleason was born on November 24, 1865, in Rochester, New York. She was the first of four children of William and Ellen McDermott Gleason, emigrants from Ireland. William was the owner of a machine tool company, later named Gleason Works. He developed a machine to automatically plane bevel gears in 1874, and Gleason Works became a prominent gear cutting company.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=6}} When Kate was 11, her stepbrother Tom died of typhoid fever, causing hardship for both the family and the company, where he had assisted William. Shortly after, she began working for her father to fill Tom's role and became a bookkeeper for the company.<ref name="Bartels">{{Cite journal |last=Bartels |first=Nancy |date=September 1, 1997 |title=The First Lady of Gearing |url=https://www.geartechnology.com/articles/21394-the-first-lady-of-gearing |journal=Gear Technology |pages=11–17}}</ref>
In 1884, at the age of 19, Gleason enrolled in the Cornell Mechanical Arts program, becoming the first woman in the university's engineering program.<ref name="Bartels" /><ref name="Karwatka">{{cite journal |last1=Karwatka |first1=Dennis |date=October 10, 2010 |title=Kate Gleason—First Female Engineering Student |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/763168925 |journal=Tech Directions |volume=70 |page=12|id={{ProQuest|763168925}} }}</ref> She was unable to complete her studies at Cornell due to renewed trouble at the Gleason factory. William had hired a man to replace her in the business, but the firm started struggling financially and he could no longer afford to pay her replacement. At his request, she returned to Rochester.<ref name="Bartels" /> She was never able to return to full-time studies to complete a degree, but through training and self-learning she earned the title of engineer and was recognized for her accomplishments. She received some further education as a part-time student at the Sibley College of Engraving and The Mechanics Institute (later renamed the Rochester Institute of Technology).{{sfn|Layne|2009|pages=41,88–89}}
==Gleason Works== Gleason resumed her work at Gleason Works and soon rose to new positions. She was named company secretary and treasurer,<ref name="NYT">{{Cite news |last=Gleason |first=Kate |date=May 19, 1910 |title=Miss Gleason Not Inventor. |pages=8 |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/05/21/104935769.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 |access-date=December 26, 2022}}</ref> and additionally became a traveling salesperson. Demand for gears soared in the 1890s as bicycle and automobile manufacturing began.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=51}} In 1893, she toured Europe to expand the company's business, an early attempt at globalization by an American manufacturer, and succeeded at finding several new foreign customers. She made a second European trip to represent the company at the Paris Exhibition of 1900.<ref name="Bartels" /> In the long term, international sales became an important component of the company's revenue. In 1997, nearly three quarters of the company's sales were international.<ref name="Bartels" /><ref name="RES">{{cite journal | last = Bailey | first = Margaret B. |date=January 2008 | title = Kate Gleason: The Ideal Business Woman | journal = The Rochester Engineer | volume = 86 | issue = 6 | pages = 8–9 }}</ref> [[File:KateGleasonMemorialEastRochesterNewYork.JPG|thumb|left|Memorial in East Rochester, New York]] Fred H. Colvin described Gleason in his memoirs as<blockquote>a kind of Madame Curie of machine tools […] Kate spent her youth learning her father's business from the ground up, both in the shop and in the field, so that when she branched out for herself about 1895 as a saleswoman for her father's gear-cutting machines, she knew as much as any man in the business.<ref>{{Harvnb|Colvin|1947|p=73}}.</ref> </blockquote>In addition to her depth of knowledge, Gleason attributed her success in sales to her uniqueness in a male-dominated profession:<blockquote>In those early days I was a freak; I talked of gears when a woman was not supposed to know what a gear was. It did me much good. For, no matter how much men disapproved of me, they were at least interested in seeing me, one distinct advantage I had over the ordinary salesman.<ref name="Bartels" /></blockquote>After her first trip to Europe, Gleason began to pay careful attention to her dress and public habits. She would select extremely feminine outfits to wear, used her sense of humor to charm customers, and went as far as to take voice lessons to practice the ideal pitch. She claimed that customers would recall a dress or hat she wore during a sale years later.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|pages=46-47}} James Gleason, a later CEO of Gleason Corporation, credited most of the company's global expansion to her work as its representative.<ref name="Bartels" /> A misconception arose that she, not her father, had invented the company's bevel planer, and the idea was promoted by her acquaintance Henry Ford.<ref name="NYT" /><ref>{{Cite news |last=Carter |first=Diana Louise |date=March 10, 2014 |title=Kate Gleason's trailblazing career in engineering began at age 11 |work=Democrat and Chronicle |url=https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/her/2014/03/10/kate-gleasons-trailblazing-career-in-engineering-began-at-age-11/6264111/ |access-date=December 26, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=May 15, 1910 |title=SKILL REQUIRED BY RACE DRIVER |pages=40 |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/05/15/104935064.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 |access-date=December 26, 2022}}</ref>
The company's expansion necessitated larger facilities, and the family relocated their factory from Brown's Race to University Avenue between 1904 and 1911.<ref name="Karwatka" />{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=69}} Gleason had the new foundry modeled after the Pisa Cathedral to create a large interior space for overhead cranes.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=58}} During this time, she also constructed a house for herself on East Avenue, which she named Clones, after the town of origin of her mother Ellen.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=61}}
==Later career== Due to conflicts with her family, Gleason left Gleason Works in 1913.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=70}} She joined the Ingle Machine Company in January 1914, when she was appointed the receiver of bankruptcy for the company, one of the first women to be appointed to such a position by an American bankruptcy court.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=73}}<ref>{{Cite news |last=D.R.C. |date=March 4, 1915 |title=Another Woman Receiver |pages=8 |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1915/03/04/100144799.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 |access-date=December 26, 2022}}</ref> Under her guidance the company was restored to profitability and repaid its outstanding debts. The company was returned to the stockholders before the end of 1915.<ref name="Bartels" /> In 1918, Gleason was appointed the president of First National Bank of East Rochester when the previous president moved overseas.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=85}}<ref>{{cite journal |date=August 19, 1918 |title=Woman Bank Head in East Rochester |journal=The Post Express |page=3}}</ref> Her time at the bank was mostly concerned with real estate and construction projects. She helped launch eight companies, including a housing project in East Rochester named the Concrest Community.<ref name="Bartels" /> At Concrest, she began experimenting with concrete to build fireproof houses at an affordable cost, using a pouring method she developed and mass production methods learned from the Gleason Works. The Concrest homes were sold for a price of no more than $4,000.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Morry |first=Emily |date=March 11, 2015 |title=Kate Gleason was behind ER's Concrest development |work=Democrat and Chronicle |url=https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/rocroots/2015/03/11/east-rochester-kate-gleason-comcrest-development/70143852/ |access-date=January 4, 2023}}</ref>
In the 1920s, Gleason traveled from Rochester for business opportunities in France, California, and South Carolina.<ref name="RES" /> She purchased and rebuilt a castle in Septmonts and built a library and movie theater in the town to commemorate the American Expeditionary Forces.<ref name="Times-Union">{{Cite news |date=January 9, 1933 |title=Kate Gleason Dies; Made Name for Self In Business World |pages=1 |work=Rochester Times-Union}}</ref> During this time period she also toured California to study adobe buildings. In 1924, she was consulted by the city of Berkeley, California, to help rebuild after a fire.<ref name="Bartels" /> In the late 1920s she began to build more poured concrete buildings in Sausalito, California, but the project was not as successful as her buildings in Rochester.{{sfn|Weingardt|2005|page=108}} At her winter home in Beaufort, South Carolina, she had plans to build a community of garden apartments for artists and writers, although only ten of these homes were completed at the time of her death. The complex was completed by her sister Eleanor and opened later in 1933.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=125}}
==Personal life== The Gleason family were friends of fellow Rochesterian Susan B. Anthony, who provided Kate with advice on business and publicity.<ref name="Bartels" /> Gleason hosted Anthony for her 86th birthday in 1906, shortly before her death.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McKelvey |first=Blake |date=April 1945 |title=Susan B. Anthony |url=https://www.libraryweb.org/~rochhist/v7_1945/v7i2.pdf |journal=Rochester History |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=24}}</ref> Gleason was later a strong supporter of women's suffrage. In 1912, she pledged $1,200 to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, one of the largest pledges it received.{{sfn|Harper|1922|page=340}} Many of her personal writings testify to her and her father's contributions to women's suffrage.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=97}} Gleason viewed marriage as a hindrance to her professional life and she never married nor had children.<ref name="RES" />
Gleason pursued a number of philanthropic interests in the 1920s, making large donations to orphanages, libraries, and schools.<ref name="Bartels" /> In 1929, she donated a large property to the Rochester Institute of Technology.{{sfn|Gordon|2007|pages=153–154}}
==Death and legacy== [[File:KateGleasonGravestone.JPG|thumb|Gravestone in Riverside Cemetery]] In 1913, Gleason became the first woman elected to membership in the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure.{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=73}} In 1914, she became the first woman elected to membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,<ref name="NYTobit">{{Cite news |date=January 10, 1933 |title=Kate Gleason, Engineer, Dead |pages=21 |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/01/10/99283081.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 |access-date=December 26, 2022}}</ref>{{sfn|Layne|2009|pages=41,88–89}}{{sfn|Gleason|2010|page=73}} followed shortly after by Lydia Weld.<ref>{{cite journal |title=American Women Engineers |journal=The Woman Engineer |date=June 1922 |volume=I |issue=11 |page=156 |url=https://twej.theiet.org/twej/WES_Vol_1.html |access-date=January 21, 2024}}</ref> Gleason represented the society at the World Conference on Power in Germany in 1930.<ref name="Times-Union" /> For her work in construction, she also became the first female member of the American Concrete Institute.<ref name="Karwatka" />
Gleason died on January 9, 1933, of pneumonia,<ref name="NYTobit" /><ref name="Times-Union" /> and was interred in Riverside Cemetery in Rochester. She bequeathed $348,000 of her $1.4 million estate to doctors and institutions in the Rochester area, including libraries and parks.<ref>{{Cite news |date=January 15, 1933 |title=MISS GLEASON LEFT BEQUESTS OF $348,000 |pages=8 |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1933/01/15/99284264.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 |access-date=December 26, 2022}}</ref> Additional land along the Beaufort River in South Carolina was donated to the people of Beaufort County for the purpose of building a hospital and an adjacent riverside park. Beaufort Memorial Hospital now stands on the land.<ref>{{Cite web |title=About Beaufort Memorial |url=https://www.bmhsc.org/about-us/history-of-beaufort-memorial |website=bmhsc.org |access-date=March 25, 2025}}</ref>
The Gleason Corporation remains in operation and retains a strong connection with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The Kate Gleason College of Engineering at RIT was named after her in 1998, following a $10 million donation from the Gleason Corporation.{{sfn|Gordon|2007|page=563}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=About Kate Gleason |url=https://www.rit.edu/engineering/about |website=Rochester Institute of Technology |access-date=December 25, 2022}}</ref> An RIT residence hall, Kate Gleason Hall, is also named after her.<ref name="notable_rit_alumni">{{cite web|url=http://campuslife.rit.edu/thesource/content.php?id=157&sec=Your%20RIT |title=The Source 2005–2006 |author=Rochester Institute of Technology |access-date=January 5, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060901132718/http://campuslife.rit.edu/thesource/content.php?id=157&sec=Your+RIT |archive-date=September 1, 2006 }}</ref> In 2010, RIT Press published a collection of Gleason's letters. In 2011 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers established the Kate Gleason Award in her honor, recognizing Gleason as a pioneer of women in engineering.<ref>{{cite web |title=Kate Gleason Award |url=https://asme.org/about-asme/honors-awards/achievement-awards/kate-gleason-award |website=asme.org |publisher=American Society of Mechanical Engineers |access-date=March 22, 2024}}</ref>
== Notes == {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}
==References== {{Reflist}} * {{Colvin1947}} * {{cite book| last1 = Gleason| first1 = Janis F| title = The Life and Letters of Kate Gleason|url=https://archive.org/details/lifelettersofkat0000glea/mode/2up |date = 2010| publisher = RIT Press |isbn=978-1933360478 | location = Rochester, New York| oclc = 653121364}} * {{Cite book |last=Gordon |first=Dane |title=Rochester Institute of Technology: Industrial Development and Educational Innovation in an American City, 1829–2006 |publisher=RIT Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-933360-24-9 |location=Rochester, New York}} * {{cite book |last1=Harper |first1=Ida Husted |title=History of Woman Suffrage |date=1922 |volume=V |publisher=National American Woman Suffrage Association |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29878}} * {{cite book|last1=Layne|first1=Margaret E.|title=Women in Engineering: Pioneers and Trailblazers |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QRa6fTwRcwwC |date=2009 |publisher=ASCE Press |location=Reston, Va. |isbn=978-0784472354 |oclc=782925070}} * {{Cite book |last=Weingardt |first=Richard |title=Engineering Legends: Great American Civil Engineers |publisher=American Society of Civil Engineers |year=2005 |isbn=978-0784408018}}
==Further reading== {{Commons category}} * {{cite web |last1=Giges |first1=Nancy |title=Kate Gleason |url=https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/kate-gleason |website=asme.org |publisher=American Society of Mechanical Engineers |date=May 1, 2012}} * {{Cite journal |last=Gleason |first=Kate |date=January 1921 |title=How a Woman Builds Houses to Sell at a Profit for $4,000 |url=https://www.libraryweb.org/~digitized/books/How_a_woman_builds_houses_to_sell.pdf |journal=Concrete |pages=8–14}} * {{cite web|title=Kate Gleason papers|url=https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/finding-aids/D473|publisher=Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester}} * {{cite book |last1=Tietjen |first1=Jill S. |last2=Bailey |first2=Margaret |chapter=Energetic Trailblazers: Kate Gleason, Edith Clarke, and Mária Telkes |title=Women in Mechanical Engineering |series=Women in Engineering and Science |date=2022 |pages=3–23 |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-91546-9_1|isbn=978-3-030-91545-2 }}
==External links== [http://vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/detail.aspx?id=2142 Gleason Works, William Gleason] at vintagemachinery.org
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gleason, Kate}} Category:1865 births Category:1933 deaths Category:Cornell University College of Engineering alumni Category:Rochester Institute of Technology alumni Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Deaths from pneumonia in New York (state) Category:Place of death missing Category:19th-century American engineers Category:20th-century American engineers Category:19th-century American women engineers Category:20th-century American women engineers Category:19th-century American businesswomen Category:Businesspeople from Rochester, New York Category:American bank presidents Category:American women bankers Category:American bankers Category:American Society of Mechanical Engineers Category:Bankers from New York (state)