Author: Margo Lee Shetterly

I thought I was going to miss the movie due to my trip to Christy’s but I lucked out and it was on as a “regular” feature rather than one of our Cinematheque showings. I ordered the book from the Library but didn’t get it finished before seeing the movie (and getting it back late cost me $1 in fines).

The movie focuses on Katherine who was the “human computer” who ran most of the numbers for John Glenn’s first trip into space. Her friends, Mary and Dorothy, also had very active professional lives; Mary became one of the first female (and black) engineers working at NASA and Dorothy became one of the first FORTRAN programmers. After reading the book, I realize that they dramatized a lot of incidents that weren’t covered in the book, but the movie certainly brought the characters to life.

The book starts during the Second World War when the NACA were hiring the brightest mathematicians (many of whom were African-American women) to help design superior aircraft. When the war ended the large corp of “coloured computers” worked to improve commercial flights. Once the space race began, NASA hired most of these women to support research into space travel. While describing the incredible skills of the many women involved in these two agencies, the book also goes into detail about what was happening elsewhere in the country – segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and inequalities based on sex.

Although the book gives lots of interesting facts about the work these women did, the movie is much more entertaining.

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