Sam Tang

The 2016 film "Hidden Figures" tells the story of a group of African American women who were "computers" (people who computed numbers) for NASA. In a time before the computers that we know today, these (mostly) women took on the task of calculating the complex numbers that allowed our first astronauts to travel in space. In 1822, Charles Babbage conceived of (but never built) a steam powered machine that could compute numbers; It would take more than a century until the first mechanical computer was actually created. In 1946, the ENIAC was built - it took 1800 square feet to house it. In the meantime, human beings were used to calculate numbers - and they mostly included female mathematicians, who were considered more suited to routine tasks. (Yes, discrimination against women didn't only include the lack of equal pay and the inability to vote!) Of course, you're looking at this from your desktop computer, your laptop - or even more likely your phone. These are photos of some of the early "computers" from the past - people who used machines that are radically different from what we know today. The advantage of these computers? Before the internet, they couldn't be hacked! Discover what computers looked like in the past: the evolution from human calculators through the introduction of early modern computer technology