Posted on Jan 6, 2017
How history forgot the black women behind Nasa’s space race
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How many people knew about these ladies. I remember a mention of them in the "Right Stuff" but didn't really grasp the implications!
Hired as a "computer"!
Vaughan joined a small group of other black female mathematicians, who would become known as the West Computers, segregated from their white counterparts. It was the same elsewhere – black employees were barred from the white employees’ bathroom, and in the canteen a sign on one of the tables read “coloured computers”.
Her first research report, on orbital flight, was also the first flight research division report written by a woman. She calculated the trajectories of Nasa’s first human space flights, and her work was crucial to the Apollo moon landing.
Hired as a "computer"!
Vaughan joined a small group of other black female mathematicians, who would become known as the West Computers, segregated from their white counterparts. It was the same elsewhere – black employees were barred from the white employees’ bathroom, and in the canteen a sign on one of the tables read “coloured computers”.
Her first research report, on orbital flight, was also the first flight research division report written by a woman. She calculated the trajectories of Nasa’s first human space flights, and her work was crucial to the Apollo moon landing.
How history forgot the black women behind Nasa’s space race
Posted from theguardian.com
Space
NASA
Posted 8 y ago
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There are countless stories of the contributions that women have made in science, technology, culture, arts, etc, that have fallen through the cracks. Female pilots of WWII only recently acknowledged. The women who invented computer programs, as well as those who were human computers before machine computing came into existence. There's a treasure trove of such stories waiting to be mined. I have one I'm working on, the first woman to circumnavigate the world. A really fascinating tale inasmuch as she had to disguise herself as a man among a crew of men.
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MSgt Michael Bischoff
It was a man's world and to top off the diffuclty of breaking that barrier so where black making the wall even higher!
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