Honors Engineering: Week Five

This week I looked up Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart, while not necessarily successful in flying solo across the Atlantic ocean, is still none-the-less a highly influential member of aviation history. On top of that, she was also a great role model for women. She showed that women could not only be pilots, but enter an engineering based field.

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to attempt flying solo across the Atlantic ocean. Many know the supposed story of how she didn't make it all the way across the ocean, crashing either somewhere in the ocean or on an island. But going beyond that, the fact that a woman would attempt a flight that so few before her had successfully completed, (Charles Lindbergh being one of them) was a huge step in the right direction for not only pilots, but aeronautical engineers and women in engineering.

Earhart had actually made it across the Atlantic previously, she just wasn't flying solo. So already she had completed a rather daunting task. But what the most inspiring part of Amelia Earhart is, (for me at least) is that she gave women the opportunity to shine in a predominantly male field. Earhart gave women the opportunity to become pilots, and engineers. While she might not have been an engineer herself, she definitely knew about planes, and I have to believe that she had some idea how they were put together. She was truly Rosie the Riveter.