Hidden Figures

This chapter focuses on the changes at Langley during the early 1960s. Shetterly describes how Dorothy took a new position in a revamped computing center, which now focused on electronic computers. At 50 years old, she was still learning and open to the future. She realized the days of human computing were fast disappearing, and projects that came in from engineers now entailed feeding punch cards with the computer language FORTRAN to mainframe computers.

Shetterly also explains how Langley built a communication system for the suborbital manned flights, part of Project Mercury. The preparation was enormous, amounting to “a total of 1.2 million tests, simulations, investigations, inspections, verifications, corroborations, experiments, checkouts, and dry runs just to send the first American into space” (208). Then President John Kennedy upped the ante in 1961, when he addressed Congress with the goal of a manned flight to the Moon by the end of the decade. It was at once an exciting and frightening prospect for those at Langley, many of whom dreamed of such a mission. With it, however, came change, as Houston, Texas, was chosen as the new headquarters for the program. Some of Katherine’s colleagues moved there to continue their work, but she opted to stay in Virginia for family reasons.