Dorothy Vaughn (played by Octavia Spencer) graduated from college at 19, joined Langley in 1943, and went on to head the West Computing Group-the segregated black, female number-crunchers. Henson) started high school at age 10 and had degrees in Mathematics and French by 18 years of age. Hidden Figures shines the spotlight on three of these amazing women: Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Even more notable, many of these arithmetic whizzes were not only black, they were women. So, during a time when black integration was a controversial topic, and with their research lab located in Langley, Virginia (a hotbed of racial prejudice), NASA reluctantly recruited people of color to fill the positions. But there simply weren’t enough skilled people, or at least among the white population, to fill the requirements. In order to perform the necessary advanced calculations, the government agency hired human computers-specifically humans highly gifted in solving complex mathematical problems. The Americans could have waited for them for a couple more years, but with the Russians already ahead in the race with Sputnik and other experimental flights, the pressure was too intense. In the early days of NASA, getting a man into space required something that wasn’t yet invented: A computer.
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