And i were expecting my first baby and we were just having a real difficult time coming up with names, my husband suggested Eleanor Francis. There was this boom picture of her black and white, nasa in 1960s where shoes accepting an award and i was stunned by this picture because i had no idea that women worked at nasa at that time much less a scientists. I really wanted to learn more. There was a large group of women who worked at this laboratory starting in 1940s and they were known as computers so at the time a digital device we have today. Host how did this group of women come together at a time when engineering that was done at jpl was a rarity . An allwomen group because a woman named macy roberts. Macy roberts started very near inception and in 1942 she was made supervisor of the computers and while she had men that applied for the job, she decided that she wanted to make it all women. Her thinking is that she we wanted to make it a Cohesive Group, but she also was worried that if she hired men they would have difficultly listening to her because she was a woman. Host interesting. So what did this group of computers do and why did this job end up primarily filled by woman . Yes, so this group of women was pretty unique to jpl in that they had a women supervisor or powerful sort of group at jpl and they spent their days. In the beginning they did a lot of traject ours and they calculated the potential of different rocket propellants and trajectory of early missiles. They ended up become the lab computer programmers and had long careers, some of them work at nasa today. Shes been there for 58 years. Their careers are very unique among nasa centers, although there were other woman who were working at computers at other nasa centers, their jobs were quite special and the careers they had. Quite unique. Host now, you mentioned a moment ago Eleanor Francis while looking for a name for your children, im wondering because you have the wonderful story about her in the production or preface of your book. Im wondering how did you choose the particular pub set of women that you speak about in the book because you do so in such wonderful detail . Personal detail, how did you choose which ones to focus on and why. There arent easy because there so many women who had contribution and held a variety of roles at the jet proportion lab and at nasa for that matter but i tend to focus on this group of women because they were there from the very beginning and their careers were so long and, you know, hayed the good fortune of being able to meet many of these women in person and get the to hear the stories from them. They are still friends today and i really had had a wonderful time hearing stories from them and vivid memories of what life was like in 1950s and 1960s at nasa and, yeah, thats how i i ended up choosing this one group of women and focused my story on a few women that had an influential role. Host okay, were you mostly going off of interviews or also working with archival sources, what was source of story . They were just wonderful in helping me find the historral documents they needed. I was lucky to be able to spend in archives and get their assistance but in terms of actually getting the stories from the women, this really proved essential while archives were very helpful in photographs and having the documents, there were so much of the story that really had been lost because no one had documented the womans role in this part of history and i was fortunate to be able to do interviews with the women themselves. Oar so often you see voices of women and women of colored are subdued and i think its incredibly important and extra benefit for you writing this book, so thank you for doing that. Im curious, one of the unsung characters is the data, their daytoday lives are entwine with interpretation of data and you have this wonderful in your preface and i was wonder if you could speak about the data itself, what kinds of data these women were working with and how it contributed to the Overall Mission of jpl and how it had changed over the course of the half century or so that you cover in this book . Well, theres certainly a lot of data to cover. You know, it starts out in a very simple way where we are learning about early missiles. A lot of the calculation that is were done on missile developed in the 50s, i found very interesting because if that missile ended up being not that important in military important but ends up being important later on in 1958 when we see explore one launched. So it was interesting to see how the womens calculations on early missiles and early fuels end up being very important when we get to the space race. And then, of course, the data changes. We go from calculating trajectories of missiles and propellant and then looking at spacecraft and theres so many wonderful stories about early probes, moon and into the planet, one of my favorite pieces is for voyagers because of the way it was done. In early 70s, at jpl they were planning a grand tour of the solar system and because of funding reasons that ended up getting cut and what one of the computers or jpl did came in the weekend and ended up finding a way to allow them to take this one mission to jupiter and extend it so that all of the so the solar system could be included and it was fascinating to me how they were able to calculate the use of good afternoonty gravity and they kept it hush, hush because there were so many concerns about nasa about going over budget. Its hard to focus on one data when theres data and fantastic missions. Host sure, i think its relevant current debate about crude and uncrude and military science and orbit research. I think this speaks to a current debate very well. In looking at in one of my favorite parts of the book in looking at these women who virtue themselves as computers, you sign posttheir stories with moments in the history of computing leading up to the modern electronic computer. I wonder if you can tell me about how you see your book sitting into the larger history of computing in the 20th century guest yes, its interest to go me because when i first started researching the story i assumed that it would be the computers that outlasted the women and it certainly happened at other nasa centers, you see that the parttime held jobs at computers lost their jobs when computers. It didnt happen at jpl. It was the women that stayed constant and what i really loved were some of the relationships they had with these devices. I was surprise today learn how much mistrust there was of ibms in the early days of nasa, many of the engineers i spoke with told me how they just didnt trust these machines. They felt that they were too prone to flairups, that they really didnt want to use them on missions and its because of that that you have the opportunity that jpl where they became the first computer programmers and have the fun relationships. One of my favorite is with an ibm1620 that the women decide to name cora and kind of becomes one one of the women of the group and gets her name plate outside of the room along with the name plate that has all of the other women in the room, that relationship that they have with technology is very interesting and it was fun to see that evolved through the decades. Thats specially interested given the focus in sort of the trust required in technology in order to send something out, obviously we werent going to send people to jupiter or the Voyager Mission but given the kind of distrust of the ibm machines and the devices that were on crew, i wonder if you saw any tension there the way that people at jpl, both women and men thought about ibm computers as robotic spacecraft that they were sending in the universe . Guest yes, i did find that interesting. It was such a long process for ibm to gain their place at jpl, that dynamic between the spacecraft that they are building and that the engineers are watching be built at jpl where theres so much trust thats going on and so much attention into every detail and yet they still want to make sure there are humans behind it that are doing all of the calculation s. Its funny that it took as long as as it did for machines to take precedents over humans in calculations and i would say theres still an interesting dynamic thats happening today at jpl, its still i think we tend to think of Space Exploration as something that is detached from humanity and something done by machines or by computers but its interesting to see how important people are to that process. Host i love the story about cor and given a womans name, i thought it was a wonderful detail. Did did the women ever have any anxiety that the computers, that the ibm computers might replace them, that the labor might be sub planted or how was their labor divided . Yes, there was a lot of fear and for good reason. You know, they actually had several supervisors that would tell the women that were working as computers, oh, your jobs are going to be gone soon, ibms are going to replace you, we are not going to need you anymore. So this was a real fear that they would be losing their jobs to technology and it certainly was something that happened in many places, it happened at nasa centers all over. The fact that they were able to persist is quite amazing. Host it is quite amazing and beyond the presence of Electronic Computers that may have an alternate universe have taken over their job, the fact that many of the women were able to persist in a time period when the expectation that women would leave their jobs upon marriage or childbirth, the fact that so many of them did continue to work for decades both in the midst of being married and having children is remarkable. During the exact same time period, many women were being barred from working in the space industry, in particular in early 1960s when a group of women considered to be astronauts, were written off largely because of expectation that investing in them would be a waste because they would eventually leave for marriage or childbirth. So i wondered why this why the story is so different . You have a few women who are forced to leave or choose to leave upon getting pregnant, why did these women persist and why jpls history is different in this period . There are several drinks why. At that time there was a small percentage, in 1960, only 25 of mothers worked outside the home, of course, there was no Maternity Leave then. So when the women got pregnant, they were often forced off the lab and what i found is that it was because they were a Cohesive Group of women and had supervisor. She provided this very strong example of a working mother because she had two children and she was able to use her Vacation Time and use that in order to substitute for Maternity Leave and come back and then what she did that wasnt happening at other places is pretty simple, she just made phone calls, she would call a women after they had a child and asked them if they wanted to come back and she had a very high success rate of getting women back after they had children and then the lab itself provided an environment that was very friendly for them because the you know, unlike other nasa centers that tended to be a bit more strict and have military atmosphere, jpl had a great Academic Field to the lab and still does and at other nasa centers people that work as computers often had to work a very, very strict 8hour day. Basically adjust their hours in a way thats common but was unusual then and, of course, they were still working very long hours. They often had to work all night when there was a launch, their hours did get long and had wonderful families and, yeah, theres lots of different reasons, but i definitely think one reason that stands out is the friendships they had and the fact that you had helen lang trying to make a wonderful environment for the working mothers. Host i think its im sure a lot of women today, a lot of working women specially working mothers might read the story and see a lot of common thread, flex time aside, a lot of trouble in balancing their work and their family lives. And i know that you are a microbiologist and a mother, i wonder how much of your own experience in the balance you dont have a lot of women in their 80s and 90s, but i really found myself relating with their experiences and sharing much of what they went through at this time. I found their stories very inspiring, the way that they handled family and work was very familiar to me and i i enjoyed that part. That part was very surprising to me and many times when ive i was having trouble balancing things, i would just think barbara did this in 1959 so surely i can do this today. [laughter] host you in addition to these uplifting moments where you can point to to the women at jpl who managed to overcome either internal or external pressures to persist in their careers, you also have a few moments of saddens or failure, moments when that strange, unusual setup at jpl fails to support the computers. You know, for instance you have one of the computer ice boyfriends that compels her to go to therapy, why is she not married and dedicate today dedicated to their careers. So im wondering if you could maybe go over some of the other external pressures that in impad the jpl computers beyond expectation of their workplace . Yeah, there certainly with your a lot of expectations that were put on women at the time. I found that one of the most dramatic, she was the first africanamerican hired at a technical position at jpl and she had an incredible background, very bright young woman, she graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering from ucla and if it was today she would have just gotten a job as an engineer but because of the limitations of her race and gender she was a computer and she ended up getting incredible advantages for jpl and from Macey Roberts and ended up becoming an engineer eventually but the external pressures of geography and that put on her were quite difficult and i found that i found it quite sad when i learned about her background and yet still inspiring that she was able to overcome that and realizing the dream of becoming an engineer. Host im glad you brought up janet lawson, i thought that her story was the compelling as one of the few women of color among the jpl computer group, when you mentioned the struggles that she came up against, one of them that you write about in the book is that even mutually she has to leave jpl because shes commuting because she doesnt feel comfortable settling in pasadena which is predominantly white and therefore to leave and being closer to home where she feels comfortable with her husband and raising her family. Janet lawson, were there other women of color at jpl during this time and how did their stories differ from their predominantly white counterparts . Yes, so helen lang once she was made supervisor, she we wanted to bring many more women as engineers to jpl and so in the late 60s she basically started this campaign where she would find women where she thought were very bright that had a lot of potential and who didnt necessarily have degrees to be hired as engineer and she would bring them into a group and encourage them to go tonight school and she found many women who had bachelors degrees and wanted to do engineering but werent quite in the right place for it. Because of this, she was able to fill the lab as engineers and she hired many minorities in this position and jpl is quite a special place thanks to helen lang and the work she did hiring. Host so your understanding and research that you did, you come to the conclusion that jpl in addition to hiring perhaps more women than other nasa centers for Space Industries during that time, they also in many ways hired more people of color than perhaps others; is that correct . I dont think thats true. I think other nasa centers hired many women as well and hired women as well. What was unique were the careers they had. Women were often fired by the late 50s or 60s and this didnt happen at jpl. Instead they ended up having long careers there. Thats what i found was unique about that lab. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about why women were being fired from other centers in the 50s and 60s . Advent of technology. They fired many of the people that worked as computers and they were often large groups of women. I found this happening at nasa centers all over the country. Host wow, so the computers at jpl really did have analogues elsewhere and maybe be concerned about their jobs and sounds like they were pretty comfortable. Did you find in research to speaking to these women that they were aware of what was happening elsewhere, were they ever concerned about losing their jobs or did the culture of women leading women at jpl give them a sense of security that they may not have found elsewhere in the country . Guest they were definitely concerned about losing their jobs. They had men that they worked with who basically told them that their jobs were in jeopardy, you guys are all going to be gone because of technology so there was certainly fear there and they managed to overcome this in large part because of the fact that they had a female supervisor who could really vouch for them and because of their relationships with many of their male colleagues, what happened that was unique at jpl that i found was that many of the male colleagues would include the women on publications and this really was very uncommon at the time but it really boosted their careers quite a bit. Host that actually brings me to a question that i have for you thats about the overall conclusions that you make in the book. I would like to read a quote in the final chapter, while protestors were demanding equal rights for women across the country, the women at jpl had created their own quality, they had form it had lab in their own image building an environment amenable to women where their work and contributions very every bit as valued as of those the male counter parts and this is really a remarkable claim specially given the struggles of women and also given what you mentioned elsewhere in your book about the same arguments about women against jpl by the men particularly, youre going to leave if you get pregnant or get married. So im wondering in stating that the Computers Work was valued the same level of mens work, you mentioned that they were included in publications, but im wondering beyond and that resinates with me in that their names being on publications shows in a very specific way kind of the economy, the production of knowledge that theyre involved with. But im wondering how you measured value beyond being included in papers because noting that the women or arguing that women shaped jpl for themselves and to create this place of equality is a very large to make specially in the 1960s, so if you could speak a little bit more about how you came to the conclusion of equal