 In 1942 Hicks took a job at the Western Electric Company , designing and testing quartz crystal oscillators in Kearny , New Jersey . She was the first woman to be employed by Western Electric as an engineer , and she spent three years working there . Upon the death of her father , she joined the Bloomfield , New Jersey based Newark Controls Company , a metalworking firm that her father had founded . Hicks served as chief engineer and then as vice president in charge of engineering , before purchasing control of the company from her uncle in 1955 . Hicks designed and patented a gas density switch later used in the U.S. space program , including the moon landing , and was a pioneer in the field of sensors that detected when devices were reaching structural limits . Hicks authored several technical papers on the gas density switch . While at Newark Controls Hicks pursued a master 's degree in physics , which she received in 1949 from the Stevens Institute . 
