of women's rights, became a telegraph operator for the Danish State Telegraph system in the 1860s. Engineering began to be taught as a formal academic discipline in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The École Polytechnique in France was established in 1794 to teach military and civil engineering; West Point Military Academy in the United States established a program modeled after the École Polytechnique in 1819. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) began to teach civil engineering in 1828. However, none of these institutions admitted women as students at the time of their founding. In the 19th century, women who performed engineering work often had academic training in mathematics or science. Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), Lord Byron's daughter, was privately schooled in mathematics before beginning the collaboration with Charles Babbage on his analytical engine that would earn her the designation of the "first computer programmer". Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854–1923), a British engineer and inventor who helped develop electric arc lighting, studied mathematics at Cambridge in 1880, but was denied a degree, as women were only granted certificates of completion at the time. Therefore, moving to the University of London, which granted her a bachelor of Science degree in 1881. Similarly, Mary Engle Pennington (1872–1952), an American chemist and refrigeration engineer, completed the requirements for a BS degree in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1892, but was given a certificate of proficiency instead. Elizabeth Bragg and Julia Morgan became the first women to receive a bachelor's degree in engineering, by the University of California, Berkeley - U.S.A, in civil engineering (1876) and mechanical engineering (1894). In the same year of Morgan's accomplish, Bertha Lamme was also graduated from Ohio State University in mechanical engineering. Mary Hegeler Carus was the first woman to graduate in engineering from the University of Michigan in 1882. She went on to study at the Bergakademie Freiberg, the first woman to be legally enrolled. Mary Hegeler studied in Freiberg from April 1885 to Easter 1886, but she had to have a private laboratory because she was a woman. Although her academic performance was excellent, she was not allowed to officially graduate because she was a woman. She went on to run the family business, Matthiessen-Hegeler Zinc Company in La Salle, at one time the largest producer of zinc in the US. Rita de Morais Sarmento (1872–1931) was the first woman to obtain an Engineering degree in Europe.