Lillian Gilbreth: Pioneering Inventor

Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), one of the first female engineers, worked with her husband Frank to invent ‘time and motion study,’ analyzing ways to make industrial processes, office tasks, and housework more efficient, reduce human error, and enhance the safety and satisfaction of workers. After Frank died, Gilbreth reinvented her career as a solo consultant, and became the first female engineering professor at Purdue University. Among other inventions, she transformed the design of kitchens and numerous kitchen appliances. In 1965, Gilbreth was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering. She was also a proponent of eugenics, an ideology supporting the racial dominance of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the U.S. population. Gilbreth and her husband raised 12 children — immortalized in the 1948 fictionalized memoir “Cheaper By The Dozen” — believing that white educated families should reproduce to keep America ‘pure.’

Interviewees: historian and biographer Julie Des Jardins, professor of history at Baruch College and author of Lillian Gilbreth: Redefining Domesticity; engineer Lisa Seacat DeLuca, IBM’s most prolific female inventor; Evelynn Hammonds, professor of the history of science at Harvard University.

Visit PBSLearningMedia to learn more about how Lillian Gilbreth’s innovations improved American’s lives in both factories and the home.