Rise of the Rocket Girls

Nathalia Holt's Rise of the Rocket Girls was a loan from my younger daughter, who is a bit obsessed with the space race. This is a corner of history that I know almost nothing about (except through her!) and this book gives a fascinating glimpse into a bygone world. I didn't know that before microprocessors, humans doing the complicated maths required to calculate rocket and satellite trajectories were known as 'computers.' And at Jet Propulsion Laboratories, all the computers were women.

A couple of remarkable women at JPL made it a policy to hire only women as computers (nearly all the engineers were men) and they created a harmonious, relatively family-friendly workplace that was fun and exciting. Of course as time went on, the electronic computers replaced the humans. It strikes me that it seems to be mostly women's jobs that are eliminated by the march of technology -- switchboard operators, typists, computers. Is this because the women's work was seen as expendable, or because women were shunted into the boring, repetitive work that was easy for machines to pick up? I suppose robots have also replaced mostly men on the factory floor, so perhaps it's not a gender issue!

E and I are going to watch Hidden Figures soon, which tells the same story from a different angle. I'm looking forward to it.