SHE USED SCIENCE TO PUSH POISON GAS OUT OF THE TRENCHES

Hertha Ayrton had already spent years breaking barriers before the First World War began.

Born in 1854, she became a mathematician, physicist, electrical engineer, inventor and campaigner for women's rights.

Her research into the electric arc brought international recognition.

She became the first woman elected to the Institution of Electrical Engineers and later the first woman to receive the Royal Society's prestigious Hughes Medal.

Then war came.

And science suddenly had a horrifying new problem.

Poison gas.

Hertha turned research she had been conducting into the movement of air and developed an extraordinarily simple device: the Ayrton fan.

It was manually operated and designed to move contaminated air and gas away from trenches and enclosed positions.

Getting the military establishment to listen to her wasn't easy.

But the device was eventually adopted.

Thousands were sent to the Western Front.

The number eventually reached around 104,000.

Think about what that represents.

A woman born in Victorian Britain.

A physicist studying electricity and waves.

Taking her understanding of science and turning it into a physical object that soldiers could hold in their hands while trying to survive one of the ugliest weapons ever introduced to warfare.

Brilliant engineering doesn't always need to be complicated.

Sometimes it needs to solve the problem in front of you.

Women Who Built the Future — Steampunk Australia

Leading to Wrinkles in the Fabric with Dr Kathryn Spurling.

The women who shaped our world weren't standing on the sidelines of history.

They were building things in the middle of it.

The IET and Science Museum Group document Ayrton's engineering achievements and her wartime fan; the IET records an eventual military supply of approximately 104,000 fans.