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Florence Violet McKenzie OBE (''née'' Granville; 1890–1982), affectionately known as "Mrs Mac", was Australia's first female electrical engineer, founder of the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC) and lifelong promoter for technical education for women. She campaigned successfully to have some of her female trainees accepted into the all-male Navy, thereby originating the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS). Some 12,000 servicemen passed through her signal instruction school in Sydney, acquiring skill in Morse code and visual signalling (flag semaphore and International Code of Signals). She set up her own electrical contracting business in 1918, and apprenticed herself to it, in order to meet the requirements of the Diploma in Electrical Engineering at Sydney Technical College and in 1922 she was the first Australian woman to take out an amateur radio operator's license. Through the 1920s and 1930s, her "Wireless Shop" in Sydney's Royal Arcade was renowned amongst Sydney radio experimenters and hobbyists. She founded ''The Wireless Weekly'' in 1922, established the Electrical Association for Women in 1934, and wrote the first "all-electric cookbook" in 1936. She also corresponded with Albert Einstein in the postwar years.〔 〕 ==Family and education== Florence Violet McKenzie was born Florence Violet Granville on 28 September 1890 in Melbourne, although before her marriage to Cecil McKenzie at the age of 34, she was known as Violet Wallace.〔 Other sources cite 1892 as her birth year. Wallace was her stepfather George's surname; he was a commercial traveller. When Violet was an infant, the family moved to Austinmer, south of Sydney. From a young age, Violet had an independent interest in electricity and invention. As she recalled in an oral history interview in 1979: I used to play about with bells and buzzers and things around the house. My mother would sometimes say "Oh, come and help me find something, it's so dark in this cupboard" – she didn't have very good eyesight… So I'd get a battery and I'd hook a switch, and when she opened that cupboard door a light would come on… I started sort of playing with those things.〔 Cited in ''Dictionary of Sydney''.〕 From Thirroul school, McKenzie won a bursary to study at Sydney Girls' High School. In 1915 she passed Chemistry I and Geology I at the University of Sydney,〔, pp. 429–30. Cited in ''Dictionary of Sydney''.〕 then approached the Sydney Technical College in Ultimo to enrol in the Diploma of Electrical Engineering. By March 1922, she had won the diploma.〔"Women and Wireless" in ''The Mercury'', 18 March 1922, p. 14 column 3.〕 In December 1923, McKenzie graduated from the Sydney Technical College. She later gave her Diploma – the first of its kind awarded in Australia to a woman – to the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, also in Ultimo. Cecil Roland McKenzie was a young electrical engineer employed by the Sydney County Council's Electricity Undertaking. He too was a radio enthusiast, and one of Violet's customers at the shop. They were married at the Church of St Philip in Auburn on New Years Eve 1924. They built a house at 26 George Street, Greenwich Point complete with a wireless room in the attic.〔 Cited in ''Dictionary of Sydney''.〕 The house remains, but has been extensively renovated since the McKenzies lived there. The McKenzies had a daughter, stillborn, in 1926.〔Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 1926, p. 10 column 1.〕 They sometimes took in the two sons of Violet's only sibling, Walter Reginald Wallace, from Melbourne. According to the Sands Directory these boys, Merton Reginald Wallace and Lindsay Gordon Wallace, later operated their own radio shop in Prahran, Melbourne.〔. Cited in ''Dictionary of Sydney''.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Florence Violet McKenzie」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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