The passage of time has modified this view. Secretaries are still invaluable, but now their bosses are sometimes female. In 1958, Sandia s Personnel Department installed a centralized Telecord system. The system allowed dictation to be made into instruments at various locations, while transcription was done at this central location. Dee Fenstermacher was a secretary in Sandia s Motion Picture Division when this 1959 photograph was taken.
Secretarial duties vary with the work of the department.
Fenstermacher is checking a script against a film s narration. Betty Brake had a BS in chemistry and was the only female member of the technical staff in her organization when she came to work at Sandia in 1955. She and co-worker Philip Class are shown here using the thermalog computer for a heat transfer study. Ruth Whan came to Sandia in 1962 with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. She performed cutting-edge research on radiation effects in semiconductors and was recognized both within the Labs and without as a leader in her field.