Girl Computers: In a top-secret program, talented, young female mathematicians helped win the war
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…Even before World War II, the Army was busily perfecting an arsenal of new artillery and infantry weapons at its Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. To develop the crucial data to operate those weapons, engineers crunched numbers with a Bush differential analyzer, a 30-foot-long mechanical calculating machine developed by MIT’s Vannevar Bush in the early 1930s. A cadre of human computers also worked at calculating figures and compiling tables, using pencil, paper, and adding machines. But when America joined the conflict in 1941, the demands of total war forced the Army to enlist more help, and the lab commandeered the resources (and the additional differential analyzer) of the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore Engineering School. That meant that a new corps of “computers” had to be assembled quickly to help process the data. With most able-bodied young men already serving in uniform, the Army sought out the most immediately available mathematical talent: young women with a gift for numbers.
Principals from many high schools received an SOS from the military, remembered Doris Blumberg, who, along with her twin sister, Shirley, was about to graduate from the Philadelphia High School for Girls in May 1942. “The principal called us in and said that they were recruiting women to do mathematical work at the University of Pennsylvania for the war effort, and that we were qualified.” Both girls believed it was their duty to do their part…