this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Hidden Figures should be required reading (required viewing?) for anyone in STEM
Assuming we're taking about the Charles Babbage era computers, yes.
They were not. They were talking about a much more important part of history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures_(book)
Babbage had some interesting ideas and produced one machine that was not especially useful. He didn't even really understand the idea of software. That was Ada Lovelace.
NASA's "computers" got us to the moon. They literally calculated Apollo 11's trajectory. They saved the men on Apollo 13 by plotting their directory back home. All with paper and their superior knowledge of mathematics.
They were women and they were black, which is why they were mostly forgotten for many years and why you probably don't know about them yourself.