Many went on to become engineers, themselves.Ĭhristine Darden of Hampton arrived at NASA in 1967 with a master's in applied mathematics to work as a computer. Like Katherine, many pressed for and were given more career opportunities. With the arrival of electronic computers, women computers weren't out of work. "I was really concerned that everything was correct," she said. Katherine considers Armstrong's moon landing - and the lander's subsequent rendezvous with the orbiting spacecraft - her proudest achievement for its sheer difficulty. In the world of science, intellect and ability often trumped race. By the time Katherine arrived in 1953, black women in the computer pool were still separated in the West Area of campus, but segregation wouldn't last much longer at the facility. In the 1940s, a junior computer was paid $1,440 a year, while a junior engineer had a starting salary of $2,600, according to NASA Langley.ĭuring World War II, Langley was actively recruiting black women even as segregation was still endemic in the South. The men were paid better, too - "Tell me about it," Katherine said wryly. The women often had the same education and skills as their male counterparts, yet female "computers" were classified as "subprofessionals," while the men were hired as junior engineers, a "professional" classification. Their tools were basic - graph paper, noisy desktop calculating machines, slide rules, curves, magnifying glasses, etc The women would read photographic film made of various tests, run raw data through engineering equations and come up with usable data, according to NASA Langley historian Gail Langevin.
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