NASA’s Black Female Mathematicians Turned Technological Change into Opportunity and Helped Make History
It’s been 10 years since the acclaimed film Hidden Figures was released in theatres. Shedding light on the unsung heroes behind NASA’s historical space launches, the film profiles the extraordinary talents of the Black female mathematician Katherine Johnson, mathematician and aspiring aerospace engineer Mary Jackson, and fellow mathematician and computer programming pioneer Dorothy Vaughn.
Black Women Behind The Numbers
During the mid 20th century, amidst segregation and the events of the Civil Rights movement, NASA was home to a handful of computers, at the time human individuals that would calculate equations and submit reports of calculations. Elizabeth Howell, in her 2017 article for Science American.com, writes, “beginning in 1935, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a precursor of NASA, hired hundreds of women as computers.
The job title designated someone who performed mathematical equations and calculations by hand…During World War II, the computer pool was expanded. Langley began recruiting African-American women with college degrees to work as computers, according to NASA.
However, segregation policies required that these women work in a separate section, called the West Area Computers—although computing sections became more integrated after the first several years.”
Bringing Their Stories To The Screen
The film spotlights the West Computing Group, with the aforementioned principal characters portrayed by critically acclaimed actresses Taraji P Henson, Janelle Monae, and Octavia Spencer, respectively. All three have captivating story arcs: Vaughn trying to become recognized as a supervisor, Jackson trying to become an engineer, and Johnson receiving the opportunity to help with calculations for one of the largest space projects at the time.
When Technology Threatened Their Jobs
It’s interesting to watch this film as artificial intelligence (A.I) is becoming more prevalent. In fact, when NASA installs an IBM-7090 electronic computer, there is a perceived threat to the human computers. At the time where much of the workforce relied on these human computers, efficiency and profit once again was rewriting the rules on work.
Recognizing the need to upskill and reinvent, Vaughn learns programming and teaches it to the group, paving the way for women in computer programming. Their jobs did not disappear, rather they evolved.
What Hidden Figures Can Teach Us About A.I.
There is no doubt all of the fear and concern around A.I is legitimate given the rushed rollout in favor of quick profits. But if there is one thing that history shows, it is that technology is only as good as human intent. Much like during the Civil Rights Movement, the country and the greater world is going through various social, cultural, political, and technological transitions and advancements.
But what Hidden Figures shows us all these years later is that technology will never destroy work, it will shift the very nature of it.
