Human computer

NACA High Speed Flight Station "Computer Room"

The term "computer", in use from the mid 17th century, meant "one who computes": a person performing mathematical calculations, before electronic computers became commercially available. Teams of people were frequently used to undertake long and often tedious calculations; the work was divided so that this could be done in parallel.

Since the end of the 20th century, the term "human computer" has also been applied to individuals with prodigious powers of mental arithmetic, also known as mental calculators.^{[citation needed]}

Origins in astronomy

The approach was taken for astronomical and other complex calculations. Perhaps the first example of organized human computing was by the Frenchman Alexis Claude Clairaut (1713–1765), when he divided the computation to determine timing of the return of Halley's Comet with two colleagues, Joseph Lalande and Nicole-Reine Lepaute.^[1] For some men being a computer was a temporary position until they moved on to greater advancements. For women the occupation was generally closed, but this changed in the late 19th century with Edward Charles Pickering.^[2] His group was at times termed "Pickering's Harem." Many of the women astronomers from this era are computers with possibly the best known being Henrietta Swan Leavitt. Florence Cushman was one of the Harvard University computers from 1888 onward. Among her best known works for him was A Catalogue of 16,300 Stars Observed with the 12-inch Meridian Photometer. She also worked with Annie Jump Cannon. That said, as a female computer she normally earned half of what a male counterpart would.

The Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikdar was employed as a "computer" for the Great Trigonometric Survey of India in 1840. It was he who first identified and calculated the height of the world's highest mountain, later called Mount Everest.

Wartime computing and the invention of electronic computing

Human computers have played integral roles in the World War II war effort in the United States, and because of the depletion of the male labor force due to the draft, many computers during World War II were women, frequently with degrees in mathematics. In the Manhattan Project, human computers, working with a variety of mechanical aids, assisted numerical studies of the complex formulas related to nuclear fission.^[3] Because the six people responsible for setting up problems on the ENIAC (the premiere general-purpose electronic digital computer built at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II) were drafted from a corps of human computers, the world's first professional computer programmers were women, paving the way for careers in data processing as socially acceptable for women in an era of gender roles. These six computers-turned-computer-programmers were Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas.

Following World War II, the NACA used human computers in flight research to transcribe raw data from celluloid film and oscillograph paper and then, using slide rules and electric calculators, reduce it to standard engineering units.

See also

• Mentat

References

1. ^ Grier, David Alan, When Computers Were Human, page 22-25, Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-691-09157-9
2. ^ Grier, David Alan, When Computers Were Human, page 82-83, Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-691-09157-9
3. ^ Kean, Sam (2010). The Disapearing Spoon – and other true tales from the Periodic Table. London: Black Swan. pp. 108. ISBN 978-0-552-77750-6. 

Bibliography

• Grier, David Alan, The Human Computer and the Birth of the Information Age, Joseph Henry Lecture, Philosophical Society of Washington, May 11, 2001.
• Grier, David Alan, When Computers Were Human, Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-691-09157-9.
• Campbell-Kelly, Martin, The Origin of Computing, Scientific American, September 2009.
• Mark Wolverton, "Girl Computers", American Heritage, Fall 2011

External links

• Early NACA human computers at work, photograph, October 1949.
• The Age of Female Computers, by David Skinner
• Sonoma University
• Wellesley