This began to change in the 1950s. Katherine Johnson, who was in attendance at Shetterly's talk, joined the West Area Computers in 1953, but spent only a few weeks there. By 1958 she had become an aerospace technologist and eventually joined the Space Task Force, where she calculated trajectories for some of the Mercury missions, including MA-6, John Glenn's first US orbital flight.
A bit wary of the calculations coming from the actual physical computers of the time, Glenn famously said, "Get the girl to check the numbers." He was referring to Johnson.
"This is a really strong example of how women rise to the occasion in a very high pressure scientific endeavor," Shetterly said. "All eyes on this man as he's going into space and this is the woman who stood behind the man and checked the numbers. You can't have a better example of what women are capable of doing in a scientific organization."
Johnson was one of several women who worked their way out of the computer pool and into actual engineering jobs — something that began happening with increasing frequency through the 1950s and into the 1960s.
In the dwindling days of human computing, as actual computers became a part of day-to-day life, one of the last women to climb out of the pool and into the ranks of NASA's engineering elite was Christine Darden.
Darden, who was also in attendance at Shetterly's talk, started her career at NASA Langley's computing pool in 1967, but fought to become an engineer and ended up being one of NASA's preeminent experts on supersonic flight and sonic booms. She was also the first African-American woman at NASA Langley to be promoted into the senior executive service.
Shetterly thinks stories like Darden's have helped to illustrate that "women are more than capable of not only doing the most intense technical work, but managing that work."
That's important in a culture that, according to Shetterly, still has the lingering perception, from both men and women, that women aren't as capable as men of doing technical, rigorous scientific work. Shetterly is afraid that can't-do attitude will drive young girls away from a growing STEM workforce, and she hopes to counter it by telling stories like Johnson's and Darden's.
"I think one of the most powerful things we can do is to tell these stories," she said.
After Shetterly's talk, Johnson, now 95, took time to chat with well-wishers. Though she's in a wheelchair and her voice was sometimes difficult to pick out over the background noise, she's still got a sharp sense of humor. "I'm looking for a job," she cracked during a conversation with an engineer who had come to hear the talk.
In a more serious moment, Johnson said she will always look back fondly on her 33-year career at NASA Langley.
"I was doing something I liked doing every day, came to work happy to be here and enjoyed doing it all the time," she said.
Darden, now 71, said she's heartened by how far women have come at NASA Langley, particularly since she can recall an era when "the efforts failed a couple of times before women did become heads of offices and were actually leading technical projects."
She's also heartened to see Shetterly telling those women's stories.
"I think it's a great job she's doing researching this and I think she'll do a great job in writing it up, too," she said. "She's very passionate about it."
For more information on The Human Computer Project, visit thehumancomputerproject.com. Joe Atkinson, NASA Langley Research Center, NASA Langley, March 27, 2014
*Editor's Note: An updated December 2016 article about the awards given to these women:
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