Human computer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Computer Room" of the NACA (1949)

A human computer is a person who made mathematical calculations before programmable calculating machines, i.e. computers in today's sense, became available for scientific and commercial purposes.

The term computer has been in use in English-speaking countries since the early 17th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first written mentions date back to 1613 and referred to "a person who calculates".

As with today's computers, human computers also followed precisely defined rules; they had no authority to deviate from them. The work was often parallelized, i.e. H. as a check, two or more computers performed the same calculations. If they agreed, the results were incorporated into the overall results.

astronomy

The procedure was chosen for astronomical and other complex calculations. One of the first examples of the organized use of human computers goes back to the French Alexis Claude Clairaut (1713–1765), who as calculator humain calculated the return of Halley's Comet together with two colleagues, Joseph Lalande and Nicole-Reine Lepaute .

For some, working as a “calculator” was an intermediate step on the way to higher tasks. At first, women were generally denied this activity, with a few exceptions. Worked so Mary Edwards of the 1780s to 1815 as one of 35 human computers for the British Nautical Almanac , which was used at sea for navigation purposes.

In the late nineteenth century that changed with Edward Charles Pickering . His working group was then called "Harvard Computers". Many female astronomers at the time worked as “calculators”. The most famous of these was Henrietta Swan Leavitt , who worked with Pickering from 1893.

Florence Cushman (1860-1940) was another woman who worked as a human computer at Harvard University since 1888 . The catalog of 16,300 stars observed with the 2-inch meridian photometer is one of her best-known works. She also worked with Annie Jump Cannon .

The Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikdar was employed as a human computer for the Great Trigonometric Survey in India in 1840. He was the first to calculate the height of the highest mountain in the world, later called Mount Everest .

Methods

Logarithm table, 1912
Logarithm table, 1912

Human computers were used in Western Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries to create mathematical tables such as trigonometry and logarithms . These tables were generally known under the names of the leading mathematicians of the working groups, as were, for example, the tables with the Bessel elements named after Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel for predicting solar eclipses . In fact, however, the lion's share of the calculations was done by an army of nameless human computers.

If the accuracy of the calculations does not require the use of too many decimal places, the logarithmic table values ​​displayed on the scales of mechanical slide rules can also be used to calculate products, quotients or more complex arithmetic operations .

In the course of progress, more and more precise tables for navigation and in the engineering disciplines were required. To increase productivity and recruitment of suitable workers were tried out different approaches. One of these was the homework method , in which human computers did their calculations at home. Often these were well-educated middle-class women who found it inconceivable to pursue a career in public.

For the calculation of function results, algorithms are used, if necessary , which minimize the computational effort, as they are also used in mental arithmetic , for example . In addition, calculation results that are often required can be learned by heart, such as the multiplication table . In order to reduce the frequency of calculation errors, plausibility tests and checks such as the nine and eleven tests can be used.

Fluid dynamics

Human computers were also used to assess the effectiveness of the Dutch closure dike ( Afsluitdijk in Dutch ) in the Zuidersee . The computer simulation was developed by Hendrik Lorentz .

In the field of meteorology , the scientific work of Lewis Fry Richardson was trend-setting. In 1922 he estimated that 64,000 “calculators” could predict the weather for the entire globe by numerically solving the associated differential equations . By 1910 he had already used human computers to calculate the pressure conditions in a masonry dam.

Second World War

In World War II , the human computer played an important role in the US. In the Manhattan Project they worked on numerical solutions for the most complex equations in the field of nuclear fission .

Katherine Johnson at NASA, 1966
Katherine Johnson at NASA, 1966

Role of women in the US

When many men were drafted into the armed forces in the United States during World War II, the available male mathematicians became scarce. As was previously the case in Europe with the mathematical tables, talented women were used. The army of US “calculators” in World War II consisted primarily of women, many of whom had degrees in mathematics.

The six people who programmed ENIAC , the first programmable general-purpose computer, came from a human computer division and were all female: Kay McNulty , Betty Snyder , Marlyn Wescoff , Ruth Lichterman , Betty Jean Jennings and Fran Bilas .

After the Second World War, the NACA , a predecessor organization of NASA , which dealt with basic research in the aerospace industry, employed human computers in the field of aviation. Her tasks included converting raw data - obtained from oscilloscopes and other sources - into standardized units. Electric calculators were used as an aid. One such employee was Dorothy Vaughan , an African-American mathematician who began her work at the Langley Research Center in 1943 .

The NACA was able to draw the end of the 1950s to an entire bar black mathematicians. Due to racial segregation , these employees were assigned separate offices and toilets, and the women themselves were referred to as "colored computers".

Dorothy Vaughan was among the first black men to be employed in a scientific capacity in a group called the West Area Computing Unit . All African American mathematicians were gathered there. Her colleagues included aeronautical engineer Mary Winston Jackson and Katherine Johnson . The latter has received numerous awards and honors and was honored by President Barack Obama in November 2015 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom , one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States .

Octavia Spencer in front of the portraits of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson in the IMAX Theater of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
"Hidden Figures" actress Octavia Spencer at the Kennedy Space Center , in front of the portraits of Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan

The life stories of these three women served as a template for the American film Hidden Figures .

Literature and film

Margot Lee Shetterly's biographical book, Hidden Figures , describes the significant contribution made by African American women who worked as human computers for NASA .

The literary original was filmed in 2016 and was released in German cinemas under the title Hidden Figures - Unrecognized Heldinnen .

literature

Web links

credentials

  1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary . 3. Edition. Oxford University Press, March 2008.
  2. ↑ Computing Machinery and Intelligence AM Turing. Pp. 433–460 , accessed September 1, 2017 .
  3. ^ David Alan Grier: When Computers Were Human . Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-691-13382-9 , pp. 22-25 .
  4. ^ David Alan Grier: When Computers Were Human . Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-691-13382-9 , pp. 82-83 .
  5. ^ Martin Campbell-Kelly, Mary Croarken: The History of Mathematical Tables. From Sumer to Spreadsheets . Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-850841-7 , pp. 10 .
  6. ^ Carlo Beenakker: The Zuiderzee project. Leiden University, Faculty of Science, Leiden Institute of Physics, Instituut-Lorentz, accessed September 1, 2017 .
  7. ^ JCR Hunt: Lewis Fry Richardson and His Contribution to Mathematics, Meteorology and Models of Conflict . In: Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics . 30, 1998, pp. Xiii-xxxvi. doi : 10.1146 / annurev.fluid.30.1.0 .
  8. ↑ Sam Kean: The Disappearing Spoon - and other true tales from the Periodic Table . Black Swan, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-552-77750-6 , p. 108.
  9. ↑ ENIAC Programmers Project - Awards ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eniacprogrammers.org
  10. ↑ DOROTHY VAUGHAN (no JOHNSON) . NASA.
  11. ↑ Elizabeth Howell: The Story of NASA's Real 'Hidden Figures' . January 24, 2017. Retrieved January 26, 2017.