steal the viewers focus DATE UNKNOWN from the central image It is hard to say exactly when in the photo This time Annie Easley was cropped from the photograph of the the photographer cropped Computer Services Division at the Lewis Research Center out Easley the only black Easley did not mention the woman working alongside exact date in the interview she gave NASA historians but five white women Easley she started working at the lab in 1955 so the event must spoke to her supervisor have taken place sometime also a woman about what after that had happened Oh I don't blame you she said I'd be upset too I didn't feel like I'm a Although Easley had minority I'm out here to do a job and I knew I had her supervisor's sympathy the ability to do it and that's nothing was done At that where my focus was on getting the job done I was time there was no Office not intentionally trying to be a of Diversity and Equal pioneer Opportunity Today this Annie Easley NASA computer office is responsible for ensuring NASA gives all employees the same opportunities When Easley was cropped from the group photo there were no laws that made this type of discrimination illegal and there was no one to follow up on a complaint of this kind Just like that Easley was removed from view and hidden away
Human Computers Today's electronic computers process and save vast amounts of information Scientists use these machines to make predictions about the weather and the spread of disease and to record the genetic makeup of a wide variety of plants and animals The first computers were very different from those of today because they were human beings These people did computations completing complex calculations before there were calculators or other electronics to help get the job done In the 1700s the first computers worked in astronomy Both men and women ran numbers to solve problems for European astronomers scientists who study the stars and planets These computers helped the astronomers calculate the paths of planets and comets orbiting the sun They estimated when these celestial bodies would complete an orbit and when each object would reach certain points in its orbit It could take weeks or months for a computer to solve a problem and it cost a lot of money to pay a computer to work so many hours Scientists could not always afford the services of these computers but the military could By the 1800s computers were still calculating the movements of the stars the planets and the moon but they were doing it to aid ship captains with navigation Because this work
was done through Great Britain's Royal Navy all the computers were men NAVIGATING BY THE STARS AND PLANETS When human computing was used to create a navigational almanac in Ship captains relied on the stars and planets to navigate using a technique known as celestial navigation They used the North Star most often In the Northern Hemisphere it is always to the north hanging above the North Pole Navigators could also use the planets to navigate but the position of other planets in relation to Earth changes This is because every planet in the solar system orbits the sun but each does so at different rates Navigating by planets required complex mathematical tables constructed by astronomers and human computers the United States women again joined the ranks crunching numbers and solving problems Still these women were white Black women such as Easley did not work as computers for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics NACA which later became NASA until World War II 1939 1945 Swept under the Rug Before World War II job choices for educated black women were limited to nursing and teaching Because of this many women interested in math decided to teach it to others It was not until World War II that NACA hired black female mathematicians including Easley Katherine Johnson and Kathryn Peddrew NASA continued to hire
black women mathematicians in the 1950s and beyond For example Christine Darden joined the government agency in 1967 Until recently few people other than their You can be anything you want to It doesn't matter families remembered the what you look like what your size is what your color is You work these women did for can be anything you want NACA and NASA Their to but you do have to work at it accomplishments remained Annie Easley's mother to hidden from sight because Annie Easley they faced two layers of discrimination as both women and as blacks Much like the many black women who worked for civil rights these black computers were pushed into the background and forgotten Despite such discrimination these black women graduated with degrees in mathematics at a time when many people thought the field was inappropriate for white women let alone for black women In the face of widespread prejudice and legalized discrimination the black women who worked as NACA and NASA computers succeeded because other people inspired them Easley's mother encouraged her to follow her dreams Johnson's father was a math whiz Darden fell in love with math when she was in high school and studied it throughout
