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 for 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 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, where the siblings attended Thirroul Public School.
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, then approached the Sydney Technical College in Ultimo to enrol in the Diploma of Electrical Engineering. By March 1922, she had won the diploma. 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, 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. The house remains, but has been extensively renovated since the McKenzies lived there.
The McKenzies had a daughter, stillborn, in 1926. 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.
Early employment and interests
Violet taught mathematics at Armidale, before deciding to take a course in electrical engineering. Throughout her studies, Miss 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.