By Sadie, 6:40 PM on Wed Dec 10 2008, 1,735 views (Edit post, Set to draft, Slurp)

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If women are leaving science careers in droves, you can't blame the Gilbert company, whose 1958 "Lab Technician Set For Girls" probably gave a lot of budding Marie Curies their first crack at chemistry! Why, you ask, couldn't they just use a regular old "boy's" chemistry set? And why, for that matter, was "lab technician" the apex of aspiration? Hey, there were probably a lot of parents who would not have stuck this under the Christmas tree without that pastel palette to reassure them - especially as it's described as a "career-builder set!" And from what we can tell, with the exception of a few pink accents, the actual contents of the set was disappointingly gender-neutral. [Guardian, Chemical Heritage Flickr]