Elise Harmon was a chemist and biologist by education, and a teacher immediately after graduation from college. She evolved to work as a chemist, a government researcher, and investigator, and then as a research and development engineer in the manufacture of printed circuit boards. After transitioning to electronics in the 1950s, she invented and patented several new technologies in the emerging printed circuit board industry that allowed efficient printing of circuit elements on plastic substrates. Harmon also worked for the government, conducting critical research on the performance of electrical generators in aircraft and worked with suppliers to provide longer-life carbon brushes for aircraft generators that would perform reliably at high altitude, critical to the war effort. Keeping abreast of the rapidly evolving technologies in production and miniaturization in the 1960s, she presented seminars and published papers at conferences in printed circuit technology and manufacture. Harmon founded her own consulting company in 1970 and consulted with domestic and international clients in printed circuit production and circuit miniaturization into the 1980s. Harmon was honored by the Society of Women Engineers as the 1956 Achievement Award recipient.