Edit & Pitch

The talks I gave about Dora went well and you can watch the presentation I gave at the British Society for the History of Mathematics conference below. It’s a short one – only 17 minutes – but it developed into an interesting Q&A with the participants. Most of them shared my frustration with the lack of documentary evidence and the consequent holes in Dora’s story. One of my fellow presenters, talking about women mathematicians in the astronomy department at Cambridge University, had had to find reference to her women of interest by reading the ‘acknowledgements’ section of academic papers from the period. The complex mathematics that the women had contributed to various projects was regarded in the same way as the typists who wrote up the papers. It must have been a long, tedious trawl through the archives to find these snippets and the glimpse they gave into the women’s work and status.

I am currently doing a short course on ‘editing and pitching your novel’ with Curtis Brown Creative, part of a major literary agency. I have been going through my novel scene by scene, making notes of what happens, how it moves the story forward and where corrections are needed to deal with both structural issues and more minor tweaks. I want the book to be the best it can be, however it ends up being published. The next part of the course will help me refine and improve my submission package, but I have to accept that it is still a long shot. Everyone seems to have written a novel during the pandemic and publishers have no gaps in their schedules till 2023, I’m told. We shall see.

Via this website I was contacted by Dora’s godson, now a retired cardiologist. It was thrilling to speak to someone so close to her and he was able to tell me more about her life at Morar and in London. His 21st birthday party had been held at the Metcalfs’ apartment in Kensington. I hadn’t realised that they used to drive up to Morar and bought property in Otley (where they lived for their final years) as a way station. I’d assumed they had travelled by train to the Highlands. Like everyone else, though, he knew nothing of her wartime activities so I’m still none the wiser there!

Update on Talks and Books

I will be speaking about Dora’s life and work via Zoom at the National Museum of Computing on 17 June at 6.30pm. You can find out more and book a ticket here. The emphasis for this talk is on how her career led to her role in the Second World War, managing the contract for supplying bombes to the Bletchley Park codebreakers.

Then on Thursday 15 July I will be speaking about Dora at the British Society for the History of Mathematics conference, more info here. This talk focuses more on how her mathematical skills were deployed to create the information services industry.

I am writing this in the Highlands. The priest at Loch Morar very kindly let me into the Lovat church on the loch, whose round tower must have been so resonant for Dora. I have updated the photos on the St Cumin’s Church page with some images that I took of the church and its gorgeous stained glass. This is the view from the church today:

view of Loch Morar from St Cumin's church

Blogs, Talks and Books

The blog post about Dora at the Women in Tech and Science Ireland tells how she was the founder of the information services industry in the 1920s. Dora quickly learned that most businessmen and government department managers lacked the vision and mathematical skills to understand how to make full use of the new mechanical calculators and tabulators. She was a mathematician and an entrepreneur and saw the potential for providing services rather than hardware.

I have been contacted by the National Museum of Computing who wanted to hear all about Dora’s role in the computing industry. They are particularly interested in her WW2 history as the museum is adjacent to Bletchley Park and the story of BTM’s struggles to supply the bombe machines and their operators is not well known. We also discussed Dora’s role as a female pioneer in a male dominated world. I have been invited to give a talk about her in June 2021 and this will appear on the NaMoC events page in due course.

This week I’m meeting with colleagues from the British Society for the History of Mathematics to discuss what we are going to present at their online People, Places, Practices Conference in July. The general topic is ‘women in computing’ but we need to be a bit more specific! More news on this when I have further details to share.

Lucent, women writers on sensuality in Scotland, from 8D Press

I have a short piece in an anthology of Scottish writing coming out this summer. There are 23 Scottish women writers featured altogether, each inspired by the sensual writing of Nan Shepherd. My piece is about my journey to reach Dora’s remote home on the shore of Loch Morar. The anthology is called Lucent and it will be published by 8D Press as a high quality limited edition, a collector’s item!

Hello!

This website tells the story of my great aunt, Dora Metcalf. She was an amazing pioneer in the information services industry and she was the first female tech entrepreneur. I’ve written a novel based on her life, rather than a biography, as there are unknowns and secrets that leave tantalising blanks in her history. Here though, I have created pages that provide the historical background to her life. Please explore!

At the moment I am seeking a publisher for the novel and I hope to blog about the publishing journey, give readers some exclusive extracts, let you know about upcoming events, share blog posts about Dora from other sites and run some promotions and giveaways. Hit the subscribe button at the foot of the page to make sure you don’t miss out.

So, what news? This week is British Science Week and Dora is being featured on the Women Who Meant Business blog. This is a fantastic site that tells the stories of early businesswomen, creating a FT – She 100. There are some fascinating unsung heroines on there.

There is also a blog post about Dora on the Women Engineers History site, which brings to the light the stories of women in engineering and construction. There will soon be a post about Dora on the Women in Technology and Science Ireland site, so watch this space.