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This book combines so many things that are passions of mine -- women's history, space exploration, copious footnotes.
It's an account of the women (human computers) who did so much to make the Jet Propulsion Lab what it is. Holt interviewed many of the women and members of their families, and does a good job intertwining the stories of their professional and personal lives.
It was almost happenstance that women played a key role from the beginning of rocket development and space exploration, just before World War II. JPL began as a college club with a small handful of members, but they were close friends with a young married couple, Richard and Barbara Canright. When the club got a research grant and developed into a business, the Canrights were their first two employees. Barbara, a math whiz, worked as a "computer", doing all of the mathematical computations by hand.
It was not happenstance that women came to dominate the computing department at JPL as the company grew. It was some of the best paying work available for bright, math-oriented young women. The pioneers in the department made sure to seek out other women, mentoring them and finding ways to make their job work for them, even with the birth of babies (something that usually ended a woman's career back in the day.) JPL was groundbreaking as well in integrating the workforce. Janez Lawson was the first African American woman hired in the department and one of the first to learn to program what we now think of as computers. Helen Ling, a Chinese American, rose to head the department for many years and made great efforts to scout and mentor promising women, sending them for training as engineers. A quote from the book: "While protesters were demanding equal rights for women across the country, the women at JPL had created their own equality." By the 1990s, a woman, Sylvia Miller, was in charge of the Mars program.
Things I didn't know until I read this book: In the 1940's an interest in rocketry was considered quack science in a lot of circles. The first Mars images made it back to earth only days after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The Voyager was secretly programmed and built to do a much larger mission than had been approved by Congress, just in case..and the planning paid off, as its early success led them to approve the plans that had already been made behind their backs anyway.
A fascinating and inspiring read.
It's an account of the women (human computers) who did so much to make the Jet Propulsion Lab what it is. Holt interviewed many of the women and members of their families, and does a good job intertwining the stories of their professional and personal lives.
It was almost happenstance that women played a key role from the beginning of rocket development and space exploration, just before World War II. JPL began as a college club with a small handful of members, but they were close friends with a young married couple, Richard and Barbara Canright. When the club got a research grant and developed into a business, the Canrights were their first two employees. Barbara, a math whiz, worked as a "computer", doing all of the mathematical computations by hand.
It was not happenstance that women came to dominate the computing department at JPL as the company grew. It was some of the best paying work available for bright, math-oriented young women. The pioneers in the department made sure to seek out other women, mentoring them and finding ways to make their job work for them, even with the birth of babies (something that usually ended a woman's career back in the day.) JPL was groundbreaking as well in integrating the workforce. Janez Lawson was the first African American woman hired in the department and one of the first to learn to program what we now think of as computers. Helen Ling, a Chinese American, rose to head the department for many years and made great efforts to scout and mentor promising women, sending them for training as engineers. A quote from the book: "While protesters were demanding equal rights for women across the country, the women at JPL had created their own equality." By the 1990s, a woman, Sylvia Miller, was in charge of the Mars program.
Things I didn't know until I read this book: In the 1940's an interest in rocketry was considered quack science in a lot of circles. The first Mars images made it back to earth only days after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The Voyager was secretly programmed and built to do a much larger mission than had been approved by Congress, just in case..and the planning paid off, as its early success led them to approve the plans that had already been made behind their backs anyway.
A fascinating and inspiring read.