Hidden Figures
"Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
11mentions
10people
2018–2024years
55% recommend36% neutral9% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I would love to know more about this in relation to coops and democratic companies.
In a 60 second spike
https://hbr.org/2016/09/the-case-against-pay-transparency (:face-palm-cringey-emjoi:)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan in the eponymous West Virginia pay transparency law. Excellent book.
https://trackbill.com/bill/west-virginia-house-bill-4428-kat...
Buffer ranks high in the search results. They are definitely a leader in SEO on this subject.
Keeping salaries private is a huge arbitrage advantage for the corporation. At work, when discuss compensation, I will openly and freely disclose my total comp. As a senior persion, this has shined a huge light in vast sea of darkness.
The autofaq for this search is interesting.
- Was just showing the subject to a youngster recently. Other folks mentioned the Code book, I liked that one. The MMM by Brooks of course. We also looked at the following videos on youtube/Kanopy and other places:
- The Story of Math(s) by Marcus du Sautoy to set the stage... school and taxes in ancient Sumeria, Fibonacci bringing Indian numbers to Europe, and other fascinating subjects.
- We watched short biographies of Babbage and Lovelace, full-length ones of Turing and Von Neumann. The "code breakers" of WWII.
- Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII, another good one.
- There's more history in PBS' Crash Course Computer science, than you might expect. It is great although so peppy we had to watch at .9x with newpipe. Shows relays, vacuum tubes, to ICs, to the Raspberry Pi. As well as the logic gates they model.
- "The Professor" at Computerphile is a great story teller about the early days.
- There are great videos about CTSS being developed at MIT I think, where they are designing an operating system via paper terminal and trying to decide on how to partition the memory/storage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
- The Introducing Unix videos by ATT are straight from the source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0
- The movie/book "Hidden Figures" touches on this time as well. Facing obsolescence by IBM, one of the characters teaches herself Fortran.
- The Pirates of Silicon Valley is a fun dramatization of the late 70s to 80s PC industry. It specifically calls out the meeting between MS and IBM as the deal of the century. We also watched a "Berkeley in '68" doc on Kanopy to set the stage before this one. Interesting, but a tangent.
- The "8-bit Guy" is also great, he dissects and rebuilds old home computer hardware from the same era, and teaches their history as he does it. Even his tangential videos on why there are no more electronics stores (besides Apple) in malls is great.
- There are good docs on the "dead ends" of the industry as well, such as "General Magic" and "Silicon Cowboys."
- "Revolution OS" a doc about the beginnings of FLOSS and Linux.
- It is perfectly acceptable and proper to congratulate a minority group who is not only advancing the art, but doing so with the additional hardship of being a minority. Not only are they advancing the art, same as many others, but they are in a way, being a pioneer and setting an example that will undoubtedly encourage many more people like themselves to join in and contribute.
To respond with "congratulations to everyone" is like responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter". Which either intentionally or not, diminishes the point trying to be made.
If you watched Hidden Figures or read the book, I think you would understand why they deserve a little bit of extra congratulations.
- As core rope was manufactured by (black and white) women: Regarding how NACA/NASA gave work to black women in times from world war ii until the moon landing, "Hidden Figures" (the book) teached me more about american history of that time than my whole school career. Technology always also influences humans, forms society.
- About "Hidden Figures": It's worth reading the book: Quite a detailled history lesson!
- I enjoyed all these. All of them are worth a read.
Business / Tech Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is. Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, Now! Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing. Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Badass: Making Users Awesome. Social Engineering in IT Security: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques. How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Global War for Internet Governance. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. The Soul of A New Machine. Hot Spots: Why Some Companies Buzz with Energy and Innovation - And Others Don't. A Computer Called LEO: Lyons Tea Shops and the World's First Office Computer. Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron. The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing. What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network. The Undersea Network (Sign, Storage, Transmission). Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly. Zero Bugs and Program Faster. Official Criticism Manual: Perfecting the Art of Giving and Receiving Criticism. Hacking Wireless Access Points: Cracking, Tracking, and Signal Jacking. Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, Set...Test! Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. The Accidental Project Manager. Building Successful Communities of Practice. Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories. More Fearless Change: Strategies for Making Your Ideas Happen. Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems that People Can Use. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. The Well: The Epic History of the First Online Community. Programmers at Work.
Science The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy Darwin's Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Hidden Figures Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Knocking On Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate our Universe Sightlines An Ocean of Air: A Natural History of the Atmosphere Snowball Earth: The Story of the Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life as We Know it Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error: The Meaning of Error in an Age of Certainty Mycophilia Packing for Mars: The Curious Science Of Life In Space No Logo King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry The Ghosts Of Evolution Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, And Other Ecological Anachronisms Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA Growing Up Boeing: The Early Jet Age Through the Eyes of a Test Pilot's Daughter Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 bath Toys Lost at Sea Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
World / Politics / Other Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power The New Jim Crow The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion The irregulars : Roald Dahl and the British spy ring in wartime Washington Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing The Gift of Fear
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