![]() “I would walk any trail if it meant finding a trace of one of the computers at its end.” “My investigation became more like an obsession,” she writes in the book. Many only remained at Langley for a few years.īut the more Shetterly dug, the more computers she discovered. ![]() Social customs of the era dictated that as soon as marriage or children arrived, these women would retire to become full-time homemakers, Shetterly explains. Even more problematic was that the careers of the West Computers were often more fleeting than those of the white men. Unlike the male engineers, few of these women were acknowledged in academic publications or for their work on various projects. The spark of curiosity ignited, Shetterly began researching these women. “It wasn't until my husband, who was not from Hampton, was listening to my dad talk about some of these women and the things that they have done that I realized,” she says. Surrounded by the West Computers and other academics, it took decades for Shetterly to realize the magnitude of the women’s work. “They were just part of a vibrant community of people, and everybody had their jobs,” she says. Her father worked at Langley as well, starting in 1964 as an engineering intern and becoming a well-respected climate scientist. One 1992 study estimated the total topped several hundred but other estimates, including Shetterly’s own intuition, says that number is in the thousands.Īs a child, Shetterly knew these brilliant mathematicians as her girl scout troop leaders, Sunday school teachers, next-door neighbors and as parents of schoolmates. Katherine Johnson at her desk at Langley with a "celestial training device."Įxactly how many women computers worked at NACA (and later NASA) over the years is still unknown. This order also cleared the way for the black computers, slide rule in hand, to make their way into NACA history. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, preventing racial discrimination in hiring for federal and war-related work. With the threat of 100,000 people swarming to the Capitol, President Franklin D. Philip Randolph, pioneering civil rights activist, proposed a march on Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the continued injustices of racial discrimination. Though the pressing needs of war were great, racial discrimination remained strong and few jobs existed for African-Americans, regardless of gender. The first black computers didn’t set foot at Langley until the 1940s. NASA dissolved the remaining few human computers in the 1970s as the technological advances made their roles obsolete. Eventually their stellar work allowed some to leave the computing pool for specific projects- Christine Darden worked to advance supersonic flight, Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo missions. They contributed to the ever-changing design of a menagerie of wartime flying machines, making them faster, safer, more aerodynamic. They worked through equations that described every function of the plane, running the numbers often with no sense of the greater mission of the project. ![]() The West Computers were at the heart of the center’s advancements. The agency was dissolved in 1958, to be replaced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the space race gained speed. Built in 1917, this research complex was the headquarters for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) which was intended to turn the floundering flying gadgets of the day into war machines. ![]() Growing up in Hampton, Virginia, in the 1970s, Shetterly lived just miles away from Langley. “Those guys have all told their stories.” Now it’s the women’s turn. “We've had astronauts, we’ve had engineers- John Glenn, Gene Kranz, Chris Kraft,” she says. The book's film adaptation, starring Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Her new book Hidden Figures shines light on the inner details of these women’s lives and accomplishments. “These women were both ordinary and they were extraordinary,” says Margot Lee Shetterly. Called the West Computers, after the area to which they were relegated, they helped blaze a trail for mathematicians and engineers of all races and genders to follow. Many of these “computers” are finally getting their due, but conspicuously missing from this story of female achievement are the efforts contributed by courageous, African-American women. Sharp and successful, the female population at Langley skyrocketed. Ushered into the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1935 to shoulder the burden of number crunching, they acted as human computers, freeing the engineers of hand calculations in the decades before the digital age. As America stood on the brink of a Second World War, the push for aeronautical advancement grew ever greater, spurring an insatiable demand for mathematicians. ![]()
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