History in the Margins

Those of you who know me in real life know that I am what the late great Peg Bracken[1] dubbed a “good cook who likes to.” Over the years, I’ve cooked in many different kitchens, each of which had its own problems. When My Own True Love and I moved into our current house, I had a chance to design the kitchen from scratch, using everything I had learned from all the kitchens I had cooked in. What I didn’t know at the time was that the underlying theories of kitchen design that shaped many of my choices were the work of an efficiency expert named Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), who admitted she couldn’t cook and probably would have had plenty in common with Peg Bracken.

For the most part, women of her time were not expected to go to college, but Lillian convinced her father to allow her to attend the University of California, even though he feared higher education would damage her marital prospects. She graduated in 1900 with a degree in English literature and a Phi Beta Kappa key. She was the first woman to be a University of California commencement speaker—the first of many firsts in her career. She completed a masters degree in English at Berkeley in 1902

In 1904, Lilian married a self-made construction engineer named Frank Gilbreth, who was ten years her senior and already known for his pioneering work in motion studies. They had twelve children,[2] which would be a good reason to be a stay-at-home mother today. Instead, Lillian worked with Frank as a full partner in his contracting firm.

In 1910, the Gilbreths closed the constrution company and opened their own consulting practice. Together they created time and motion studies using the new medium of film to analyze the best way for workers to perform task. They would film workers performing tasks, and then break them down into partial movements they called therbligs.[3] They produced more than 250,000 feet of silent black and white “micromotion” films from 1912 to 1924 as a means of making industrial processes and office tasks more efficient. They also used their home as a motion-study lab, using their children as guinea pigs. Their experiments included detailed analyses of motions to help find faster and more efficient ways to wash dishes, take baths, brush teeth, and perform chores like washing dishes.[4]

Their work took a new turn after Lillian went back to school at Brown University. She intended to get her PhD in English, but the man she wanted to work with refused to admit her to his classes, saying she would distract his male students[5]. Instead she enrolled in the psychology department. After she completed her PhD in applied psychology in 1915, she used what she had learned to suggest improvements in worker efficiency. Frank continued to focus on time and motion studies; Lilian thought about the workplace environment. She considered the impact of fatigue and motivation. She asked what workers need to be happier on the job. That question became the element that set the Gilbreth system of scientific management apart from their competitors.

When Frank died suddenly in 1924, the consulting business they had built together evaporated. Lillian found that their former clients were not willing to hire her. Lillian had always been a full partner in the business. She had co-authored the books and papers they wrote. She had revolutionized their approach to scientific management by thinking about how technology would affect the people who used it. And in 1921, she became the first woman inducted into the Society of Industrial Engineers. But the Gilbreths had never made her role obvious. Most of the clients had assumed Lillian was Frank’s assistant.

With eleven children[6] to support, and, as she pointed out, 44 years of college to pay for, Lillian created a solo career for herself by focusing on increasing workplace efficiency for jobs performed by women, using the same techniques she had developed with Frank. She worked for corporate clients—for example, she redesigned the cashier department at Macy’s department store, reducing the time new employees needed to become effective workers from four months to two days.

Working for General Electric, she also extended her ideas about workplace efficiency to the home. She conducted a large group focus test of some 4,000 women in order to learn about kitchen design and countertop heights—as best I can tell, she did not film women in the kitchen or time them with a stopwatch. She did, however,  run experiments in which her children made strawberry shortcake in traditional kitchens and in her proposed kitchen layouts.[7] Using that information she transformed the layout of the American kitchen. She invented things like the foot pedal trash can, refrigerator door shelves, and the electric mixer. She worked with manufacturers to redesign kitchen appliances for greater efficiency. Small changes, big impact.

And slowly, she earned the public reputation for engineering and efficiency that she should have had all along. Beginning in 1930, she began to do consulting work for the government on questions of civil defense and war production. She was the first woman engineering professor at Purdue—a position she held from 1935 to 1948. She taught at various times at Bryn Mawr, the Newark College of Engineering, the University of Wisconsin, MIT, and Rutgers. In 1965, she was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 1966, she received the Hoover Medal,[8] which is bestowed jointly by five engineering organizations for “great, unselfish, non-technical services by engineers to humanity” —the first, and until 2005 the only, woman so honored. She received 23 honorary doctorates and more than a dozen honorary memberships in professional societies.

She finally retired in 1968, at the age of 90.

[1] Bracken was the author of the I Hate to Cook Book, which was in its own way a feminist manifesto when it came out in 1960. Bracken, then a 42-year-old copywriter, received multiple rejections from male editors who told her women would not only not buy the book, they would be offended by the title. After a woman editor at Harcourt Brace took a chance on the book, three million women proved the male editors wrong. The book is funny, smart, and subversive.  But I digress.

[2]     One reason she and her husband had twelve children was they were proponents of eugenics. They believed white educated families should reproduce to keep America “pure”. Ick.

Lillian never overly repudiated her early belief in eugenics, but later in her career she pioneered designs to make it easier for people with physical disabilities to perform household tasks. When an interviewer asked her what she thought was her most important achievement, she answered promptly “My work for the handicapped—that is the one that has done the most good.

People are complicated

[3] Gilbreth spelled backwards. Creativity in one arena does not mean creativity in all arenas.

[4] Two of the children took their revenge for spending their a childhood as guinea pigs by writing a semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in a with efficiency experts for parents, titled Cheaper by the Dozen. It was made into a movie with the same title starring Clifton West and Myrna Loy in 1950. New versions were released in 2003 and 2022, both of which have nothing to do with the original story other than the title and the trope of a family with twelve kids. I suspect you can guess which of the three I want to watch. But I digress, yet again.

[5] There is something pathetic about the idea that the mere presence of a woman would make it impossible for a room full of men to concentrate.

[6] The twelfth had died in childhood.

[7] I must admit, I wonder who taught the children to cook. Did they learn out of desperation?

[8] Herbert Hoover was the first to received the honor, in 1936.