Gifted engineer and pioneer, Bertha Lamme was born on her family’s farm near Springfield, OH on December 16, 1869 and graduated from rural Olive Branch High School in 1887. She was the first woman to receive an engineering degree from The Ohio State University when she graduated from their Mechanical Engineering Department in 1893. Lamme today is considered to be the first American woman to graduate in a main discipline of engineering other than civil engineering. After graduation, she went to work at Westinghouse Company where she worked in mathematics and machine design on a team of engineers, led by her brother Benjamin. Her achievements were reported to have inspired fellow women contemporaries to study engineering, but were accomplished in a time when women were welcome to compete with men only until they were married. She worked at Westinghouse until 1905 when she married Russell Feicht and thereafter did engineering work at home in addition to her role as wife and mother.