📽️ Watched Hidden Figures.
Based on real life events, this is the story of 3 computers. This was in the era when to be a computer was to have human rather than artificial intelligence. It was simply the job title of someone who computes. Here we’re talking about mathematicians.
We learn about the lives of three such computers. In this case they happen to be Black women who work at NASA on critical tasks such as manually computing flight paths. Computers there were amongst the lower status technical jobs - “do these sums, we’re not telling you why”. In an era of rife sexism many computers were women and stood little chance of career development, respect or acknowledgement.
It was also an era of extremely overt racism in the United States (amongst other places). It was hard to find decent jobs if you were Black, or for that matter to access the education that would let one develop any skills needed for technical work. Segregation was the norm. Black people were unable to, for instance, use the same bathrooms as White people, attend the same schools, drink or eat in shared spaces and so on - all obstacles which these women certainly faced, amongst so many others.
Specifically in this film, we learn about the lives of Mary Jackson , Katherine Goble Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, as they use their considerable talents towards the service of the incredible developments surrounding space flight that happened in the 1960s - particularly in this story the facilitation of John Glenn to be the first American to orbit Earth - whilst simultaneously battling a system that didn’t want them there, and individuals that resented their very existence.
It’s based on true story - primarily the non-fiction book of the same name. So the three named protagonists are real people. But a good amount of artistic license was applied, occasionally somewhat controversially. However it’s an important film to, if nothing else, remind us that the history of NASA isn’t all about clever serious White men. Incredible contributions were made by others even whilst Black people, women, and most especially Black women had to fight far harder than that demographic for any kind of acceptance no matter what talents and capabilities they had.
