Florence Violet McKenzie (; 28 September 1890 – 23 May 1982), affectionately known as "Mrs Mac", was Australia's first female electrical engineer, founder of the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC) and lifelong promoter of technical education for women. She campaigned successfully to have some of her female trainees accepted into the all-male Navy, thereby originating the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS). Some 12,000 servicemen passed through her signal instruction school in Sydney, acquiring skill in Morse code and visual signalling (flag semaphore and International Code of Signals).
She set up her own electrical contracting business in 1918, and apprenticed herself to it, in order to meet the requirements of the Diploma in Electrical Engineering at Sydney Technical College. Described at the time as Australia's "Mademoiselle Edison", in 1922 she became the first Australian woman to take out an amateur radio operator's licence. Through the 1920s and 1930s, her "Wireless Shop" in Sydney's Royal Arcade was renowned amongst Sydney radio experimenters and hobbyists. She founded The Wireless Weekly in 1922, established the Australian Electrical Association for Women in 1934, and wrote the first "all-electric cookbook" in 1936. She corresponded with Albert Einstein in the postwar years.
Family and education Florence Violet Granville was born in Melbourne on 28 September 1890 to George and Marie Annie (née Giles) Wallace. Other sources cite 1892 as her birth year. Before her marriage to Cecil McKenzie at the age of 34, she was known as Violet Wallace. On Violet's birth certificate, Annie's name was listed as "Annie Granville", after the listed father of her elder brother Walter, James Granville [or Greville]. No records confirm the existence of James. When Violet was two, the family moved to Austinmer, south of Sydney.
The siblings attended Thirroul Public School. Here little Violet already displayed both confidence and ability at a school entertainment in 1899 in recitation and singing.
From a young age, Violet had an independent interest in electricity and invention. As she recalled in an oral history interview in 1979: Violet later won a bursary to study at Sydney Girls' High School and completed her senior year in 1909, despite repeating a year due to ill health. She then enrolled in Sydney Teachers' College with the intention of becoming a mathematics teacher. Her elder brother had studied to become an electrical engineer in England while Violet was in high school, returning as she began her teaching diploma. In 1915 she passed Chemistry I and Geology I at the University of Sydney,, pp. 429–30. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. then approached the Sydney Technical College in Ultimo to enrol in the Diploma of Electrical Engineering. By March 1922, she had won the diploma."Women and Wireless" in The Mercury, 18 March 1922, p. 14 column 3. In December 1923, McKenzie graduated from the Sydney Technical College. She later gave her Diploma – the first of its kind awarded in Australia to a woman – to the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, also in Ultimo.
Cecil Roland McKenzie was a young electrical engineer employed by the Sydney County Council's Electricity Undertaking. He too was a radio enthusiast (callsign 2RJ from early 1922, but for receive only), and one of Violet's customers at the shop. They were married at the Church of St Philip in Auburn on New Year's Eve 1924. They built a house at 26 George Street, Greenwich Point complete with a wireless room in the attic. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. The house remains, but has been extensively renovated since the McKenzies lived there.
The McKenzies had a daughter on 9 June in 1926 (stillborn). There is no record of any other children. They sometimes took in the two sons of Violet's only sibling, Walter Reginald Wallace, from Melbourne. According to the Sands Directory these boys, Merton Reginald Wallace and Lindsay Gordon Wallace, later operated their own radio shop in Prahran, Melbourne.. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney.
Early employment and interests Wallace taught mathematics at Armidale, before deciding to take a course in electrical engineering.
Throughout her studies, Wallace worked as an electrical contractor, installing electricity in private houses, such as that of politician Archdale Parkhill in Mosman, and in factories and commercial premises, including the Standard Steam Laundry on Dowling Street, Woolloomooloo.
Wallace was an enthusiastic wireless experimenter, being licensed to receive from late 1922 shortly after the commencement of the new Wireless Regulations of 1922 (callsign 2GA, later A2GA, OA2GA, VK2GA). She passed the Amateur Operator's Proficiency Certificate in 1925 (the first woman to do so) and thereafter was permitted to transmit. She held her licence continuously till the commencement of WW2 in 1939 when all Australian amateur transmitting privileges were withdrawn for the duration of the war. When amateur licensing resumed in 1946, her allocated callsign was VK2FV (the letters no doubt chosen by Violet for Florence Violet).
In 1922 Wallace opened "The Wireless Shop", after purchasing the entire stock of the wireless vendor who preceded her – billing itself as "the oldest radio shop in town" Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. – at shop 18 in the Royal Arcade (which ran from George Street through to Pitt Street – replaced in the 1970s by the Hilton hotel).Ric Havyatt quoted in Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. McKenzie later said it was schoolboys visiting her shop who first introduced her to Morse code. Australia's first weekly radio magazine was conceived at the shop by Wallace and three co-founders. "The Wireless Weekly" became the monthly magazine "Radio & Hobbies" (after a period operating in parallel), then "Radio, Television & Hobbies", and finally Electronics Australia, and remained in circulation until 2001.
In 1924 McKenzie became the only female member of the Wireless Institute of Australia. That same year she travelled to the United States for business reasons, and in San Francisco was welcomed at Radio KGO: 'Miss Wallace, an electrical engineer from Australia, will now talk from the studio.' She reportedly used her time on air to comment on the difference between the tram systems in San Francisco and those in Sydney. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. In 1931 she also notes that she experimented with improving the science of television through the use of chemistry: The McKenzies had a mutual interest in tropical fish and had an enormous fishpond in the front yard. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. She spoke of heating water electrically to house tropical fish at home in the early 1920s, and of having given talks on Radio 2FC about tropical fish in the days when she was doing electrical contracting work. In January 1933 the American journal Aquariana published an article written by McKenzie concerning 'Some interesting inhabitants of Sydney seashores', in which she recommended keeping sea horses in a salt-water tank. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney.
McKenzie joined the British-based Women's Engineering Society in the 1930s (at that time the only organisation for women engineers in the world) and was described as "our most distant" member in an article in The Woman Engineer journal 1942.
Women's technical education
In the 1930s, McKenzie turned her attention increasingly to teaching other women about electricity and radio. She had observed the need over years of working in the field herself. In 1925, she told the Australian Woman's Mirror: "[T]here are such a lot of women experimenters [amongst my customers] that I would like to form a Women's Wireless Club." In 1931 she told a Sunday Sun reporter that she wanted to see a course of lectures on domestic radio and electricity established in girls' schools and technical colleges. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. The following year she took matters into her own hands, opening a Women's Radio College on Phillip Street in 1932. She persuaded employers to take on some of her trainees, as one of them later recalled:
McKenzie believed that electricity could save women from domestic drudgery, writing that... "To see every woman emancipated from the "heavy" work of the household by the aid of electricity is in itself a worthy object." Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. To this end in 1934 she founded an educational initiative, the Electrical Association for Women (EAW) at 170 King Street in the centre of Sydney, later moving a few blocks away to 9 Clarence Street.
Concerned with safety when using electrical appliances, and no doubt drawing on her own experience in receiving an accidental electric shock that knocked her out for an hour, McKenzie delivered at least one talk on resuscitation, advising that conventional resuscitation should proceed for up to three-quarters of an hour following electrocution. She knew of one case where recovery took 4 hours.Cairns Post, 25 January 1935, p. 14 column 5; Australian Women's Weekly, 24 June 1933, p. 6.
By 1936, McKenzie had sold the Wireless Shop, and was busy at the Electrical Association for Women. She gave electric cooking demonstrations in the EAW kitchen, which was fitted out with show electrical appliances by the Sydney County Council. She compiled the EAW Cookery Book, Australia's first "all-electric" cookery book, which ran into seven editions and remained in print until 1954. She wrote an illustrated book for children about electrical safety called The Electric Imps in 1938.
In July 1938, McKenzie was one of 80 women in attendance at the inaugural meeting of the Australian Women's Flying Corps (later known as the Australian Women's Flying Club) held at the Feminist Club of New South Wales at 77 King Street. She was appointed treasurer and instructor in Morse code to the organisation.
Women's Emergency Signalling Corps
In 1939 McKenzie established the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC) in her Clarence Street rooms – known affectionately as "Sigs". Her original idea was to train women in telegraphy so that they could replace men working in civilian communications, thereby freeing those skilled men up to serve in the war. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. By the time war broke out, 120 women had been trained to instructional standard. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney.
Women's Royal Australian Naval Service
McKenzie campaigned energetically to have some of her female trainees accepted into the Air Force and Navy as telegraphists. She encountered a great deal of official resistance. In 1940 she wrote to the Minister of the Navy, former Prime Minister Billy Hughes, saying "I would like to offer the services of our Signalling Corps, if not acceptable as telegraphists then at least as instructors." Despite her suggestion being dismissed, some time later McKenzie and six trainees were provided third-class train tickets to Melbourne to meet with the Naval Board for testing.
In early January 1941, Commander Newman, the Navy's Director of Signals and Communications, visited the WESC headquarters on Clarence Street to test McKenzie's trainees. Finding they were highly proficient, he recommended the Navy admit them. Hughes still took some convincing. After McKenzie threatened to take her offer to the Air Force instead, the urgent need for trained telegraphists prevailed, and on 21 April a Navy Office letter authorised the entry of women into the Navy. Cited in Dictionary of Sydney. This was the beginning of the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service – the WRANS. The minister's condition was that "no publicity...be accorded this break with tradition".