#Katherine johnson nasa documentary movie#

Katherine Goble Johnson, a gifted mathematician, performs essential calculations and makes important theoretical contributions for determining the trajectories and orbits of America’s first satellites and manned space missions.

Dorothy Vaughan, who supervises the “colored computers.” She sees that digital computers are the wave of the future and learns the prototype programming language FORTRAN, orients herself to a room-sized IBM computer, and encourages the women in her section to do the same.

#Katherine johnson nasa documentary movie#

The three real-life heroines of the movie are: Space program both before and after the “human computers” were replaced by digital computers. “Hidden Figures” is the story of three black women who made important contributions to the U.S. The human computers reported to the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, operated by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The need for these workers was so great that even in those days of rampant racial discrimination, black women were hired as well as whites. They worked with pen, paper, and analog calculating machines.

Their task was to calculate numbers and to solve the equations necessary for new generations of airplanes, the first American rockets, and the first U.S. FICTION (SOAPS, DRAMAS, AND REALITY/SURVIVAL SHOW)įrom the 1930s to the advent of the digital computer in the early 1960s, several hundred female “human computers” were hired by the federal government.FILM ADAPTATIONS OF NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, OR PLAYS.TALKING AND PLAYING WITH MOVIES: AGES 3-8.