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Gleason, Kate
| (1865-1933) was the first woman member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1914), the first woman member of the American Concrete Institute, and the first woman to serve as president of a U.S. Bank. She was also a member of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (1913). She began her career with her father's company in Rochester, Gleason Works, by working Saturdays at the factory when she was eleven or twelve. In 1884, she was admitted to Cornell University to study mechanical arts but appears to have returned to work for the family firm (at her father's request) before graduating. She became the secretary-treasurer of the firm and led the company to become a leading producer of gear-cutting machinery. Her father, William Gleason, invented a planing machine for beveled gears, for which Kate Gleason has often gotten credit although she herself never claimed it. After leaving Gleason Works in 1913, she took over another machine tool company and turned it around from near-bankruptcy, then served as president of the First National Bank of Rochester. One of her concerns while serving at the bank was the development of low-cost housing. She developed a method of pouring concrete that allowed her to sell low-cost concrete box houses in East Rochester, New York, in 1921. She served in 1930 as ASME's representative to the World Power Conference in Germany. Upon her death in 1933, a large portion of her estate went to set up the Kate Gleason Fund for charity and education. Kate Gleason was born in Rochester, New York. |
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