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About Contact Archives Search Feed Blog🔗 ↑This article was originally published by American Experience to accompany its documentary, CHASING THE MOON. Written by Nathalia Holt and edited by Ben Greenberg.
Computers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including Janez Lawson and Barbara Paulson. Credit: NASA/JPL
By Nathalia Holt
In 1965, Poppy Northcutt was the only female engineer at NASA’s Houston Mission Control. As she gazed at the men around her she thought to herself, I’m as smart as they are. Although she belonged among them, it was undeniably difficult to be the only woman in what sometimes felt like the domain of men.
As isolated as Northcutt felt in the historic control center, she was one of thousands of women who began their careers at NASA as computers. It was a job created before the advent of electronic machines, when human aptitude was required to perform all the mathematical calculations needed for experiments. Women have historically filled these positions, as exemplified by the groups of female computers who worked at the Harvard Observatory and the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the late 1800s. At NASA, these women came from all over the world, working at centers across the United States, and comprising a diverse and potent force in space exploration. Their calculations would ultimately be responsible for sending astronauts to the moon.
Read the full article at American Experience
Nathalia Holt is the New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls.
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