Let’s Go On Vacation!

Vintage Photo Tuesday is back with images of women at work from 1940s to the 1960s.

Let’s jump right in and see what I found!

Disclosure: Some of the links on my blog from Etsy , eBay are Affiliate Links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. 

June 1955 photo of women picking up their pay check at their office. Wonder where they work, where they have lockers? Super 1950 dresses on our featured ladies.

Source: Etsy

NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson is photographed at her desk at NASA Langley Research Center with a globe, or “Celestial Training Device,” in 1962 (Source).

About Katherine:

Born on Aug. 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Johnson began her career in 1953 at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that preceded NASA, one of a number of African-American women hired to work as “computers” in what was then their Guidance and Navigation Department. 

Johnson worked at Langley from 1953 until her retirement in 1986, making critical technical contributions which included calculating the trajectory of the 1961 flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She is also credited with verifying the calculations made by early electronic computers of John Glenn’s 1962 launch to orbit and the 1969 Apollo 11 trajectory to the moon. Johnson worked on the Space Shuttle Program and the Earth Resources Satellite and encouraged students to pursue careers in science and technology (Source).

Source: NASA

Hanging out at the elevator at work. 1950s image of 3 women at their office.

Source: Etsy

The below 1960s picture is my favorite of ALL the photos that will appear in this post..why? Well you may or may not know that two women in this image are tying Rebar (Reinforcing Steel) in Cuba. Why do I care? Because my family is a reinforcing steel family.

My grandparents (and my dad) are immigrants from Germany in the early 1950s to Canada. They made their way to the city I grew up in (Sarnia, Ontario) where my grandfather started a Reinforcing Steel business called ‘Gruening Steel’. The business main job was to cut, bend and install Rebar (the tying you see below). We had this business until the 1990s. I even worked in the yard one summer and then moved into the office during my college days. My dad still works in the business for the company that bought the family business way back when.

ALSO! There are very very little women in this business out in the field. The only women I knew who did this job was my aunt (my dad’s sister) and she had to put up with a lot of men being..men back in the 70s & 80s. My aunt eventually moved into the office doing detailing (the breaking down of where the rebar goes for buildings) which is still a male dominated job. She is pretty darn amazing!

So now you know why I love this photo.

Side note…tying rebar is a very hard job and using the right tools does make it easier. No gloves, too big of gloves and using your hands or a allen key instead of pliers will make the job go 10 times slower. I applaud these women for what they are doing because it’s not easy.

Source: eBay

1950s vintage photo of two office women in a room filled with ledgers and paperwork. A young man is in the photo as well. That is a lot of papers..yooza!

Source: Etsy

Coming soon to a blog post near you…Ontario’s Farmerettes: Canada’s Forgotten Wartime Heroes.

From 1941-1952 the Farmerettes were high school aged girls, who planted, hoed, thinned, sprayed, staked, detasseled and harvested the fruit and vegetables in Southern Ontario (I grew up in this area) when the men had left farm labour jobs to enlist for service to fight for our freedom (Source). FANTASTIC!

Source: Readers Digest

Now if you wish to jump ahead and learn more about these women, please check out the webpage “Farmerettes in Ontario” by Bonnie Sitter & Shirleyan English. You can also pick up her book “Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz” HERE (scroll to bottom for ordering details).

1940s photo of a young Black woman working on a machine in a factory. According to the Library of Congress, “Plant foremen point to 20-year-old Annie Tabor as one of their best lathe operators, despite her lack of previous industrial experience.”

Source: Buzzfeed

Waitresses at Ipswich’s Regal Café, c1940. Look at those outfits! WOW!

The back of this photo is inscribed to the Greek proprietor: To Jimmy from Lorna, Ethel, Audrey and Jean. The two waitresses seated in the middle were Ethel Dreier (left) and her older sister Lorna Dreier (right). (Source).

Source: Queensland Historical Atlas

Vintage photo of a young woman working the cash register at the hobby shop in the 1950’s.

Source: Etsy

1950s maybe early 1960s photo of a young Black Woman working at a diner in her uniform. Notice the price of drink and food above her head? So cheap for donuts!

Source: Pinterest

Vintage image of “Betty” at work at J C Penney’s in the 1960’s. What a fun photo!

Source: Etsy

A list of soda fountain flavours can be seen on the sign behind Vera Dawson and Maureen Sheppard, who were waitresses at Londy’s Café in Ipswich in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Super 1949 Hairstyles!

Source: Queensland Historical Atlas

I hope you enjoyed this editon of VPT. It is always fun on my end to browse vintage photos for hours at a time.

Share in the comments section what your favourite images were!

Thanks for stopping by!

Liz