Beatrice Mead Hagedorn papers

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: MS-0294

Staff Only

Scope and Content

This collection contains photocopies of clippings from Newsday (1942), the Nassau Leader (1943), the Brooklyn Eagle (1943) a quip from the New Yorker (1942) and photocopies of photographs and a certificate.

The clippings document the work of Beatrice Mead Hagedorn. The photographs depict her as a radio operator at Cornell University and working at Bell Laboratories. The certificate was presented to her from Bell Telephone Laboratories and state she has contributed to victory in the Second World War by, "continuing to assist the Bell Telephone System in the maintenance of essential communications, the Laboratories concentrated on research, development, design and engineering for the United States Army/United States Navy, Office of Scientific Research and Development."

Dates

Creation: 1942-1943

Language of Materials

English

Access Restrictions

Open for research.

Use/Re-use Restrictions

Consult Special Collections and University Archives

Biography/Profile

Beatrice Mead Hagedorn was born September 27, 1919, in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Cornell University with a B.E.E. (1942) in electrical engineering with a mathematics and physics option. She was the second woman to receive a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell. Hagedorn was also the first woman to obtain a radio control operator's license in the United States and worked as the first female radio control operator at WCHU, Cornell University's broadcasting station.

After graduation and during World War II she worked in the research division of the Bell Telephone Company. Employed as an engineer in the crystal units group, Mead designed, made, and tested crystal models as well as writing specifications for their design.

She married Lt. Alfred Arthur Hagedorn, an engineer with the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943. They owned and managed their own business in Colorado Springs, Colorado until 1995. Alfred Hagedorn died March 11, 2005. Beatrice Mead Hagedorn died May 4, 2006.