bunny of women engineers. i don't know anyone who is busier with more stuff, whether it's in her professional life as a consultant to a power industry or her efforts on behalf of women -- on behalf of women in technology. the same can be said of charlotte, though she comes from a different professional experience. with a background in communications, she's been instrumental in forming an organization devoted to helping women move from middle to upper management positions. despite these backgrounds, i find their collaboration on this project unsurprising. they both have conquered hurdles and fought to pursue nontraditional career paths. they both are keenly aware of the -- some of the women who paved their way. though, jill's women are generally found in science and technology and charlotte's are found in the realm of liberal and fine arts. and finally, they're both pretty determined women. so if they decide something needs to be done, it's going to get done. i asked jill why this project was important and she told me, and i'm paraphrasing here, that we couldn't understand how we got to where we come from unless we knew the people who came before us. and unless we had an understanding of the amount of work and time it took to get there. i think she's right. and together, jill and charlotte have created a collection that not only educates, it inspires. i'm sure that each of you will go through this book and find a favorite -- particular favorite entry and i have mine. it's on page 176, 1974, the owner and founder of this store. [ applause ] i know she didn't found this store for me, but its place in denver and the people it's brought through have had a tremendous impact on my life. but she's just one of the many examples, amazing examples in this book, many of whom are women who have largely been forgotten that are now brought back because they're included in this collection. this is not only an important work, it's a labor of love. please join me in welcoming jill and charlotte. >> charlotte and i are pleased to be with you here today because this represents a celebration of five years that we've been working together we had a book inside of us just waiting to come out. and tonight we get to celebrate its emergence and we thank you for being here with us tonight for this celebration. and thank you to the many people who believed in us and thought that we could change the world. thank you, robin, for that kind introduction and your long-standing friendship and support and the interview in sunday's denver post. our book agent is tonight and sandra has always truly believed in this project. jill who brought us together, stefi alan, joyce, who helped us be here tonight, and carolyn miller who helped us procure the images. two acquaint you with the book, we thought we would answer some of the most frequently asked questions that we get. "her story," a timeline of the women who changed america, is a visual timeline of over 850 women from 1587 to 2007. women who changed our country with their significant accomplishments, most of whom we don't know about and most of whom we don't learn about in school. we start with virginia bear who was born in what will become the state of north carolina in 1587. we progress through time in this slide of the women who changed america in 1940 note the varied visual images and the richness of the range of accomplishments of these women, from actors and entertainers, to sculptors and writers. and we reach 2007. a year during which harvard university, which was founded in 1636, names its first woman president, an achievement that only took 400 years. [ laughter ] >> the idea for the book grew out of my teaching a leadership class. when i mentioned some historical women who i thought the class should have known, i was flabbergasted that they did not know the women who came before us. women who have contributed so much to our lives in so many different fields of endeavor. so what do you do? i went looking for a book. a book like "her story" that i thought i could use in my classes. i was unable to find one. i was unable to find a timeline format that placed the woman into the history of her time. and then my determination went even further because i went to a tea party at a friend's house and we played a parlor game where the accomplishments of ten women were on one side and their names were on the other and you had to match the woman to her accomplishments. it was a group of highly educated women and i was the only one who got all ten names matched correctly. that was even more astounding what happened next was that not one woman, other than me, i've already said i was the good one, right, no one knew who margaret sanger was. not one woman. so who is margaret sanger, some of you might be saying? margaret sanger was an early advocate of a women's right to control her own body. as early as 1916 she opened a birth control clinic and laid the foundation for planned parenthood. can you imagine that, doing that in 1916. so there are about three things that are really important for women in 2008 to have the lives that we have today. the first is the right to vote. the second is the right to own property. the third is the right to control our own bodies. i believe it is very important for all of us to know who margaret sanger is as well as many other forgotten and invisible women throughout united states history. i had gathered the names of many women and i put them in a timeline format. the first timeline was an excel spreadsheet scotch taped together, 80, 100 pages or more, and when jill and i met in 2003, i had about 300 women on my timeline. >> by the time i had met charlotte, i had collected the names and accomplishments of many historical women in various fields of endeavors throughout u.s. history. my odyssey began in 1987 with an essay contest. my colleague attended a society of women engineers national convention in kansas city and came back with the idea for sponsoring an essay contest we ended up doing it for sixth graders throughout colorado and wyoming on great women in engineering and science. and i said to alexa, that's really a wonderful idea. who are they? like many of you in this room, certainly many of the groups that i speak to who are not potentially as highly educated and informed, i knew one historical woman in engineering and science at that time and that was madam marie curie. so we needed to start researching the historical women in engineering and science because one of the things that i learned -- i know this will surprise you, that in order to judge the essays, we had to be sure that these sixth graders were telling us the truth. [ laughter ] because they lie. [ laughter ] and if you are going to award prizes and give books to their schools, i better not be that sally ride went to the moon, that she's married to steven holly and she has two lovely daughters. which one essay actually said. i didn't make that up. our research uncovered many women through u.s. history, including the woman who i know characterize as my catalyst in this whole process, admiral grace marie hopper. admiral hopper developed the first computer compiler, the first english-based computer language and found a computer bug. she liked to believe that she had coined the term computer bug. it was actually a moth that was stuck in the relays of the computer at harvard where she was calculating trajectories to fight in world war ii and to fire missiles and she removed that moth with her mirror and tweezers. and it got taped into the logbook. that's not why it's memorable to me. i am very proud of my successful nomination of admiral hopper for the national medal of technology which is the u.s. equivalent of the noble prize. i received that medal from the first president bush for admiral hopper in the white house rose garden because she was unable to attend the ceremony. the family, when she -- then i nominated her to the national women's hall of fame, the family asked me to receive that many dalin for her as well and when the destroyer hopper was launched at the bath iron works in january of '96, the family asked me to be there as well. i have subsequently nominated quite a number of women to the national women's hall of fame including dr. virginia apghar. there's a score administered at 1 minute and 5 minutes after birth called the apgar score, that's a woman. and i found many other women in my field -- in many fields of endeavor through think research. in 2002, i spoke on a women and technology panel. jill mars from the women's vision foundation came up after i spoke and said, i would really like to get to know you better. and i put her off for a while and finally had lunch with her and she said, you must meet my friend charlotte. i called charlotte in early 2003 and i'm going to tell the story anyway. when i called charlotte, she said, i'm sorry, i'm going to london. you must call me when i get back. [ laughter ] i did. we had lunch. and at the end of that first lunch charlotte said to me, i want to write a book with you. and we were going to have our first work session in march of 2003. does anybody remember march 19th, march 20th, march 21st, three feet of snow at my house, seven feet in charlotte's house in evergreen. so we actually started working on the book in april of 2003. now, heard that charlotte's background is in speech and communications while mine is as an electrical engineer. she had no idea who many of the scientific and technical women were, including gertrude ilian. she won the noble prize in physiology or medicine in 1988 for the development of a childhood leukemia drug. >> i was just amazed that jill had never heard of izadora duncan. she was a well-known dancer who unfortunately is more remembered now for her death than her life because she strangled with a long scarf while she was in her car. but jill's research had not focused on the categories of women with which i was familiar, actors, writers, dancers, journalists, photographers, and others. but our knowledge was so complimentary to one another, it enhanced our partnership and made our ability to write this book so much richer because we came from those two different places. so at our very first meeting, serious meeting of writing the book, we decided that we would really research all of the women to identify as many women as we could that fit very specific criteria that we wrote out so we could include people in the book. we've mentioned there are about 850. there are actually 866. but that's out of about 6,000 women who we looked at. we reviewed over 200 books on women in u.s. history. and many were books with a specific emphasis on a kind of woman. for example, great african-american women, 100 notable jewish women, women of the west, famous women photographers, women in radio and television. the "ladies' home journal" pick of the last 100 years. fortunately, we both have very significant libraries containing these books and during the course of our work together, we each bought many other books in this genre. and as we told people about the book project that we were writing on, many, many people provided ideas to us, recommendations. one alerted us to effa manly just after she was inducted the first woman to be inducted into the baseball hall of fame. another fought for the inclusion of victoria woodhall, the first woman to run for president. they're still telling us about people. and we're collecting names right now for a second edition. we gather names from newspapers, articles, the magazines, from obituaries, from research that we did on the internet. we kept our eyes and ears open and looked for possible women to include everywhere that we could. >> we mentioned that we developed the criteria for selecting the women as early as our first meeting in april of 2003. we wanted the book to provide educational information and for the large majority of the women to be role models. for people who read the book to be able to find women like me in leafing through its pages. and so we did have rules that we developed. we included many women who were the first to accomplish something. this particular example is mary keys who was the first woman to receive a u.s. patent in her own name in 1809 because up to that point in time, patents could only be issued in the names of men. so in 1809, she received a patent for a device that weaved straw with silk or thread. we included women who were outstanding in their particular areas of accomplishment. this is marie tall chief who was a famous native american ballerina. this is the patent, the 1870 patent, for the invention of the square-bottomed paper bag, what we would call the grocery sack. women who contributed in other ways to the quality of life that we have today in 1935, electrical engineer may believe mcfaren was involved in designing the power machinery at the hoover dam. we chose not to compare one woman's accomplishments versus another. after all, susan b. anthony fought for most of her life for a woman's right to vote. speed skater bonnie blair won gold medals in olympic games and was the first woman to win five gold medals at the olympics. she did not have to spend years convincing people of her cause, to raise money for that cause, or to be arrested and jailed for voting and following that cause. we fully believe that it is impossible to weigh one woman and her accomplishments against any other. and ultimately we came to the understanding that it is the very diversity of achievement that is critically important at identifying the breadth and depth of women's contributions to u.s. history. >> you may wonder, our rules would have precluded the -- >> for we had agreed that women's accomplishments should not be dependent on their husband's or their father's. if that is how they obtained their money or how they advanced into political office or how they achieved their position. kathryn graham's father purchased "the washington post" and her husband ultimately became the publisher. upon his death, she became heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the newspaper. we include her because it was her decision to publish the pentagon papers and then to break the watergate story. >> you may wonder how we got from my paper timeline to our book. well, i used to take that scotch taped together timeline to many venues around denver as i taught classes for the women's vision leadership institute and one occasion i was presenting before the board, joan miller was there, a senior vp, and she looked around the room at those scotch-taped pieces of paper and just shaking her head and she said, charlotte, honey, computers have come a long way. [ laughter ] we really can do better than this. and they did. our vision was converted into a beautiful visual display and we showed that display in quite a number of places. because we had that display in hand, we were able to attract interest from the woman who became our book agent. and it enabled her to sell the book to harper collins, always thank you ch2m hill. our editor had very specifically ideas about how the information in the book should be presented and in fact she insisted that we use a specific graphic designer from harper collins, laura, who had amazing vision and developed what became the look and feel of "her story." >> many people ask us when they see the book, where are the people like me? for the photographer who asked, there is dorothy lank and others, for african-american individuals, many of the women they would expect to see. i travel quite frequently and i'm sure you can imagine that i talk to all of my seat mates about the book. they always ask me about the women like them. i've had discussions about all the golfers in the book, about all the native americans in the book, i've had discussions from all the people from oklahoma in the book and i had the discussion about who are the woman who are profiled in the year of my birth, the year that that person was born. we are very proud of the inclusiveness of the women we have chosen to present in our book. some people ask about athletes, others ask about women of their ethnicity or profession. we know that they are not all here. you heard charlotte say we looked at thousands before we chose the ones to include, but over 850 are. >> we believe that our inclusiveness of women of all ethnicities and all fields of endeavor will lead to greater knowledge about these women and their accomplishments and we hope, like the philosophy expressed by margaret mead, that we will contribute in some small way to a richer culture. so for all of those women who stories we have not included, and the girls whose stories are yet to come, we truly dedicate this effort. we welcome you to visit our website, to email us with your thoughts as well as the names of women who you think should be in the next edition. and we're going to take just a few questions and then we will be happy to sign your books. again, we are so happy that all of you are here with us tonight to celebrate the publication of "her story." [ applause ] >> robin? >> the stories that you went through, which stories surprised you most? what was the most unexpected thing you came across? >> okay. i'll go first. eliza is in 1744. when she was 14 years old, she developed the method to extract indigo dye and cultivate dye in what's now south carolina. that indigo supported the economy of the carolinas for 30 years and then she married her husband, whose name i can't remember, i really can't, and of her children, one of her sons actually signed the united states constitution and another one of her sons became the governor of south carolina. so it's very obvious that she was a strong, capable woman and she raised strong, capable sons. >> i think for me i was most astounded when i learned that in 1800, the united states had the highest birthrate per woman in the world. it wasn't india, it wasn't china, it wasn't any emerging country. but the united states. 7.04 babies per woman. and that absolutely astounded me because i thought, goodness, how did they do anything else? [ laughter ] other questions? >> we'll wait for the boom. >> if you could give one piece of advice to american women today, what would it be? >> did everyone hear that question? if you could give one piece of advice to american women today, what would that be? i would say follow your dream. follow your passion. stand up, be counted. we have a great opportunity now to do so many things that the women before us couldn't even dream about. at the time -- in 1848, when the women got together to try to begin to get the vote, women were not allowed to speak in public. think about that. that wasn't that long ago, 1848. >> and i was going to echo many of the things that charlotte said, but i would also said that it's so important to be persistent. we lose the fact or the sight of the fact that things do not happen overnight, they do not usually happen the first time. sandra bond was not the book agent -- the first book agent that we approached. we had quite a number of rejections before she agreed to representative us. if you have something that you believe in, then you just have to pursue it and you have to be tenacious and determined. >> looking at the entire history that you've looked at, how do you see the more modern feminist movement of the '60s and the '70s in perspective? >> i'll start with that one. it's very interesting to me, there are amazing parallels throughout u.s. history between the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement. it happened certainly in the 1800s after the civil war. it took longer for the women to get the right to vote and it's also very important for us to acknowledge that there have been great successes from the women's movement of the 1960s and the 1970s. there are women who are in a wide range of careers like say mechanical and electrical engineers, like robin and me, and women who are lawyers and business people and finance people in every area. i think that we're not finished yet. there still are a lot of challenges to come. >> someone asked me to -- that we should tailor our marks in the name of the speech that she wanted us to give was, we ain't done yet. [ laughter ] and i think there have been so many women since the second wave of feminism in the '60s who have started businesses, for example, that that just simply was not possible before that time. one thing that jill and i were talking about was, well, women started these businesses and they were all seemingly, quote/unquote, feminine areas. they were women who started a lot of cosmetic businesses, women who started food businesses. well, these were simply the areas they knew about and yet they made them into gigantic empires. you look at someone like estee lauder who -- one of the things that she said was, she was a great marketer, she said three ways to get to the audience, telegraph, telephone, and tell a woman. [ laughter ] >> question up here? >> of the women that are in the book who are living today, do they all know that they're in your book? it seems like such an honor. >> thank you. we think it's an honor, too, and no, they don't don't. but some of them know indirectly because every single image in the book we had to write for permission. and in many cases pay a fee to use that image. most cases pay a fee. so their agent may know or their executive tor may know or other people who represent them. but we hope to reach out to them in the coming months, share with them, let them know that they're in the book and hear from them personally. >> there's a question over here. >> i know that the book is just out very recently. but i'm wondering if there are any plans to market the book to schools so that our young people that are in the schools can have a wealth of information of all of these remarkable women. >> thank you, sandra. yes. absolutely. we've had a great book review in book page and that apparently the document that a lot of librarians use to select their books and the book was deemed quite outstanding and so we sure hope that libraries will come to understand that they need this book. i gave a speech a few months ago where a woman talked right away and she was so enthusiastic about the book. she then spoke in her segment at this conference and she said, every person in my audience needs to buy three copies. and i was quite astounded and happy, of course. one for themselves, one for a girl or woman in their family, and one to give to their local library. i thought that was fabulous. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> the review in book page actually says, this book is an edition that is needed in every library, every public library, every personal library, every school and every college library. and we -- yes, we have a publicist, we were on the radio three times last week. we were on tv monday morning, fox, and we're doing everything that we can to try to get the word of the book out. and we would ask all of you to help us as well. and there's a question over here. >> the editing process must have been a difficult one for you. what was the hardest essay for you to part with in the editing process. >> we had the idea that we would do these small excerpts for each woman within the body of the book and then we would do longer studies in an index format. and so we were very diligent. we worked really hard and we had over 100, i think, completed for this back story and everyone said to us, what are you, crazy? the book is already this thick. nobody is going to read all that other stuff. so we had to settle with creating a huge biography so now our hope is, if you get excited ability a particular woman and you have this little excerpt about her, you can go to the back and find many other places that you could read more about her. >> in addition, one of the things that happens when you write a book as we found is that it's not the same title that you start with. it's not the same concept, necessarily, that you start with. and as you saw, it's not the same format that you start with. when the title was changed to "her story: a timeline of the women who changed america," and that word changed is important, there were women who had been in our earlier drafts who were deleted from the book because of that particular concept. and i would say that there were some that we probably had some angst about, but in the manner of the fact that it had to be who changed america, it was obvious that those particular women didn't need to be in the book anymore or some of them -- we couldn't actually verify some of the information about, and so those women were removed as well. >> you're still celebrating this book. you mentioned you're writing a second book. is the criteria going to be the same or are you looking at women differently? >> we didn't say we were writing a second book -- [ laughter ] -- we said we're collecting names. i have a spreadsheet, of course, i have a spreadsheet that is now four pages long. it's got over 100 names of women who have been suggested to us that need to be added to the book. we don't know if all of those women would in fact meet our criteria for inclusion, but i will tell you that we are still finding women who are buried and invisible that are not known to the public at large like many of these women in the book and so we want to just collect all of those names and assuming that this one sells well and, again, you can all help us on that, that we'll have an opportunity to do another edition and -- we can't even imagine what it's going to be at this point in time. that's a lot of things like the editors and establishers do. . >> good evening, i would like to thank you both for including me in your book. i'm the first woman elected to congress. thank you. [ applause ] >> i always said that the first woman to do anything had no one to proceed her. so she had no role model to follow, she had to make her own way, and that is the way it was. i was elected in 1916 and found myself in congress in march of 1917 when they called for a vote for a war that was taking place in europe. so the first vote by the first woman in congress was a vote against war. i understand that women in politics have come quite a long way. [ laughter ] but i do want to make one comment, if i may, addressing the question about the second wave feminists. i have the luxury of a long perspective in history. when i was elected to congress, women didn't see themselves as pursuing these kinds of goals to be equal to men. they saw themselves as wanting to step alongside and bring a woman's perspective to the government, to science, to education, so it wasn't a -- i will be just like a man. it was a way of saying, i will bring this feminine perspective to all of these areas of life because it's very much needed. it wasn't present. and here we have all of these women's stories brought together as the woman's perspective. i think the feminists going forward will continue to see that it isn't about the equality of perspective or approach or whatever it is you're going after. it is the fact that there are two ways of seeing every question and that women's way of seeing that should be equal to a man's. [ applause ] >> there's a -- right behind you, matthew. >> wondering if you considered a book of women who have changed the world from all different countries 1234? >> no, we have not. [ laughter ] it is really hard to find these stories. it is really hard to make the choices who's in, who's out, jill talked about we have so much angst about some people's accomplishments might be seen as small if you compare them to other people's accomplishments. we don't want to compare. so the world seems like a really big task. i would love to find the stories of many earlier women, that's what intrigues me. because so many of those are really lost. and it would be great fun to have the opportunity through talking to people around the country to hear about their grandmothers or their great grandmothers or their cousins and find out more about american women. 400 years, give us a break here. a lot for us to put in these books. well, i think we're at a good place then if we can take a moment, we're going to set up for a book signing and we just welcome any of you who want that opportunity to have an autographed book to join us. thank you so much. [ applause ] weeknights this month, we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. the uso, or united service organizations, marked its 80th anniversary last month. the non-profit organization provides entertainment and other services to u.s. military personnel. tonight, texas christian university professor talks about the women who volunteered to entertain american service members during wartime. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. american history tv on c-span3. exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, university of georgia professor john morrow recounts the story of eugene bullard. at 6:00 p.m. eastern on the civil war, brad stone from the national museum of civil war medicine looks at the role animals served in the civil war from transporting supplies to acting as mascots. on sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, the life and legacy of sojourner truth. a woman who self-emancipated in 1786 and spoke out on women's rights. on the presidency, a look at the personal and political partnership between franklin and eleanor roosevelt through home movies which give a behind-the-scenes look at the couple. exploring the american story, watch american history tv this weekend on c-span3. next, kirstin downey talks about her book "the woman behind the new deal." in that