Mary Morgan (white) at JPL had Richard Feynman and another engineer standing over her while she calculated the date from the first US satellite to make sure that it indeed was in orbit. She also later rewrote the program, largely on her own, for Galileo’s antenna problem so the low range antenna would be able to transmit with enough power an its journey through the solar system.
Katherine Johnson (Black) verified the results from the IBM computer for Glenn’s flight. Through the 50s the NACA employed a little over 300 human computers, total from both coasts. the numbers jumped dramatically in the late 50s. They did not check each others work 100s of times. Certainly there was verification.
Given the sources cited in these books, what the authors’ suggest is highly probably. Is it 100% accurate? Nothing is.
Conditions in VA and throughout the south were abysmal for Blacks. It is wrong to treat any human being that way.
I understand the movie portrayal is a conglomerate of characters and event for the sake of time and drama. A 3 week long documentary would not sell well at the box office. The Chief of the department chopping down the segregated bathroom sign is a dramatization and a falsehood. No department head chopped down a sign. Bathrooms were segregated until at least 48 and probably until 49 maybe even as late as early 1950. The women ate at their desks because of the work load and because they did not want to go to the segregated lunch room. It was depressing. The average employee worked 10-12 hour days. Pre launch, some people, women included, worked 14-18 hour days. Dorothy Vaughn earned her degree in advanced mathematics and engineering while working full time for NACA an impressive accomplishment for anyone. She attended school in VA near Richmond provisionally because of her color. It is in the court records cited in the source material of Hidden Figures. How she addressed the judge in the movie is a dramatization, but the sentiments are real.
Are you like this about TV? You do realize people don’t stick their fingers out of the water counting to 3 while they drown? You also do realize that all those people aren’t actually murdered in Oxford on British TV and that it isn’t a single detective working alone on one case over the course of a few days to solve every murder that comes his way? In fact, little more than 9% of all crime results in a prison sentence in the US, that the vast majority of crime goes unresolved, that less than half of all murders are ever solved. Do you write to TV networks complaining about the false portrayal there? Are you like Grandpa Simpson writing to Victoria’s Secret complaining that there are any old women in the catalog and therefore outside reality and their customer base?
Is everything factual in Hidden Figures? Of course not. were there Black female computers working for the NACA, JL, and NASA? You bet. Did they do great work? You bet. Did they initially endure poor treatment because of their race and sex? You bet. Were there men working alongside the women? Not really. they worked largely alone. they certainly confered with the male engineers but did not work with male computers, certainly not at JPL. Was the south a fun place to live up until the early 70s if you were Black? Not really. I would not have traded places with them. I know you would not. You are not suggesting that we return to the segregation of the 30s and 40s, are you?
Pathetic baby boomer mewling. You admit I’m right about the factual falsehood of the movie. Keep swilling your daily dose of cultural marxist propaganda and make sure to thank Hollywood for the pleasure.
You are totally missing the point that Hollywood took a story where the woman herself said she was not discriminated against at NASA and made it into a historically false, anti-white morality play that defames one of America’s greatest achievements.
The fact that baby boomer conservatives like you failed to grasp what is going here is the direct cause of the left’s victories in areas related to multi-culturalism and political correctness.