Computer (occupation)

The term "computer", in use from the early 17th century (the first
known written reference dates from 1613),[1] meant "one who
computes": a person performing mathematical calculations, before
calculators became available. Alan Turing described the "human
computer" as someone who is "supposed to be following fixed
rules; he has no authority to deviate from them in any detail."[2]
Teams of people, often women from the late nineteenth century
onwards, were used to undertake long and often tedious
calculations; the work was divided so that this could be done in
NACA High Speed Flight Station
parallel. The same calculations were frequently performed
Computer Room (1949)
independently by separate teams to check the correctness of the
results.

Since the end of the 20th century, the term "human computer" has also been applied to individuals with
prodigious powers of mental arithmetic, also known as mental calculators.

Origins in sciences
Astronomers in Renaissance times used that term about as often as they called themselves
"mathematicians" for their principal work of calculating the positions of planets. They often hired a
"computer" to assist them. For some people, such as Johannes Kepler, assisting a scientist in computation
was a temporary position until they moved on to greater advancements. Before he died in 1617, John
Napier suggested ways by which "the learned, who perchance may have plenty of pupils and computers"
might construct an improved logarithm table.[3]: p.46

Computing became more organized when the Frenchman Alexis Claude Clairaut (1713–1765) divided the
computation to determine the time of the return of Halley's Comet with two colleagues, Joseph Lalande
and Nicole-Reine Lepaute.[4] Human computers continued plotting the future movements of astronomical
objects to create celestial tables for almanacs in the late 1760s.[5]

The computers working on the Nautical Almanac for the British Admiralty included William Wales,
Israel Lyons and Richard Dunthorne.[6] The project was overseen by Nevil Maskelyne.[7] Maskelyne
would borrow tables from other sources as often as he could in order to reduce the number of calculations
his team of computers had to make.[8] Women were generally excluded, with some exceptions such as
Mary Edwards who worked from the 1780s to 1815 as one of thirty-five computers for the British
Nautical Almanac used for navigation at sea. The United States also worked on their own version of a
nautical almanac in the 1840s, with Maria Mitchell being one of the best-known computers on the staff.[9]

Other innovations in human computing included the work done by a group of boys who worked in the
Octagon Room of the Royal Greenwich Observatory for Astronomer Royal George Airy.[10] Airy's
computers, hired after 1835, could be as young as fifteen, and they were working on a backlog of
astronomical data.[11] The way that Airy organized the Octagon Room with a manager, pre-printed
computing forms, and standardized methods of calculating and checking results (similar to the way the
Nautical Almanac computers operated) would remain a standard for computing operations for the next 80
years.[12]

Women were increasingly involved in computing after 1865.[13] Private companies hired them for
computing and to manage office staff.[13]

In the 1870s, the United States Signal Corps created a new way of organizing human computing to track
weather patterns.[14] This built on previous work from the US Navy and the Smithsonian meteorological
project.[15] The Signal Corps used a small computing staff that processed data that had to be collected
quickly and finished in "intensive two-hour shifts".[16] Each individual human computer was responsible
for only part of the data.[14]

In the late nineteenth century Edward Charles Pickering organized the "Harvard Computers".[17] The first
woman to approach them, Anna Winlock, asked Harvard Observatory for a computing job in 1875.[18] By
1880, all of the computers working at the Harvard Observatory were women.[18] The standard computer
pay started at twenty-five cents an hour.[19] There would be such a huge demand to work there, that some
women offered to work for the Harvard Computers for free.[20] Many of the women astronomers from
this era were computers with possibly the best-known being Florence Cushman, Henrietta Swan Leavitt,
and Annie Jump Cannon, who worked with Pickering from 1888, 1893, and 1896 respectively. Cannon
could classify stars at a rate of three per minute.[21] Mina Fleming, one of the Harvard Computers,
published The Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra in 1890.[22] The catalogue organized stars by spectral
lines.[22] The catalogue continued to be expanded by the Harvard Computers and added new stars in
successive volumes.[23] Elizabeth Williams was involved in calculations in the search for a new planet,
Pluto, at the Lowell Observatory.

In 1893, Francis Galton created the Committee for Conducting Statistical Inquiries into the Measurable
Characteristics of Plants and Animals which reported to the Royal Society.[24] The committee used
advanced techniques for scientific research and supported the work of several scientists.[24] W.F. Raphael
Weldon, the first scientist supported by the committee worked with his wife, Florence Tebb Weldon, who
was his computer.[24] Weldon used logarithms and mathematical tables created by August Leopold Crelle
and had no calculating machine.[25] Karl Pearson, who had a lab at the University of London, felt that the
work Weldon did was "hampered by the committee".[26] However, Pearson did create a mathematical
formula that the committee was able to use for data correlation.[27] Pearson brought his correlation
formula to his own Biometrics Laboratory.[27] Pearson had volunteer and salaried computers who were
both men and women.[28] Alice Lee was one of his salaried computers who worked with histograms and
the chi-squared statistics.[29] Pearson also worked with Beatrice and Frances Cave-Brown-Cave.[29]
Pearson's lab, by 1906, had mastered the art of mathematical table making.[29]

Mathematical tables
Human computers were used to compile 18th and 19th century Western European mathematical tables,
for example those for trigonometry and logarithms. Although these tables were most often known by the
names of the principal mathematician involved in the project, such tables were often in fact the work of
an army of unknown and unsung computers. Ever more accurate tables to a high degree of precision were
needed for navigation and engineering. Approaches differed, but one was to break up the project into a
form of piece work completed at home. The computers, often educated middle class women whom
society deemed it unseemly to engage in the professions or go out to work, would receive and send back
packets of calculations by post.[30] The Royal Astronomical Society eventually gave space to a new
committee, the Mathematical Tables Committee, which was the only professional organization for human
computers in 1925.[31]

Fluid dynamics
Human computers were used to predict the effects of building the Afsluitdijk between 1927 and 1932 in
the Zuiderzee in the Netherlands. The computer simulation was set up by Hendrik Lorentz.[32]

A visionary application to meteorology can be found in the scientific work of Lewis Fry Richardson who,
in 1922, estimated that 64,000 humans could forecast the weather for the whole globe by solving the
attending differential primitive equations numerically.[33] Around 1910 he had already used human
computers to calculate the stresses inside a masonry dam.[34]

Wartime computing and electronics

It was not until World War I that computing became a profession.
"The First World War required large numbers of human
computers. Computers on both sides of the war produced map
grids, surveying aids, navigation tables and artillery tables. With
the men at war, most of these new computers were women and
many were college educated."[35] This would happen again during NACA human computers –
World War II, as more men joined the fight, college educated Supersonic Pressure Tunnel staff in
women were left to fill their positions. One of the first female 1950s
computers, Elizabeth Webb Wilson, was hired by the Army in
1918 and was a graduate of George Washington University.
Wilson "patiently sought a war job that would make use of her
mathematical skill. In later years, she would claim that the war
spared her from the 'Washington social whirl', the rounds of
society events that should have procured for her a husband"[35]
and instead she was able to have a career. After the war, Wilson
continued with a career in mathematics and became an actuary and
turned her focus to life tables.

Human computers played integral roles in the World War II war 1954, NACA computer working with
effort in the United States, and because of the depletion of the microscope and calculator
male labor force due to the draft, many computers during World
War II were women, frequently with degrees in mathematics. In
the 1940s, women were hired to examine nuclear and particle tracks left on photographic emulsions.[36]
In the Manhattan Project, human computers working with a variety of mechanical aids assisted numerical
studies of the complex formulas related to nuclear fission.[37]
Human computers were involved in calculating ballistics tables during World War I.[38] Between the two
world wars, computers were used in the Department of Agriculture in the United States and also at Iowa
State College.[39] The human computers in these places also used calculating machines and early
electrical computers to aid in their work.[40] In the 1930s, The Columbia University Statistical Bureau
was created by Benjamin Wood.[41] Organized computing was also established at Indiana University, the
Cowles Commission and the National Research Council.[42]

Following World War II, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) used human
computers in flight research to transcribe raw data from celluloid film and oscillograph paper and then,
using slide rules and electric calculators, reduced the data to standard engineering units. Margot Lee
Shetterly's biographical book, Hidden Figures (made into a movie of the same name in 2016), depicts
African-American women who served as human computers at NASA in support of the Friendship 7, the
first American crewed mission into Earth orbit.[43] NACA had begun hiring black women as computers
from 1940.[44] One such computer was Dorothy Vaughan who began her work in 1943 with the Langley
Research Center as a special hire to aid the war effort,[45] and who came to supervise the West Area
Computers, a group of African-American women who worked as computers at Langley. Human
computing was, at the time, considered menial work. On November 8, 2019, the Congressional Gold
Medal was awarded "In recognition of all the women who served as computers, mathematicians, and
engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) between the 1930s and the 1970s."[46]

As electrical computers became more available, human

computers, especially women, were drafted as some of the first
computer programmers.[47] Because the six people responsible for
setting up problems on the ENIAC (the first general-purpose
electronic digital computer built at the University of Pennsylvania
during World War II) were drafted from a corps of human
computers, the world's first professional computer programmers
Computers for the Explorer 1
were women, namely: Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn trajectory.
Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran
Bilas.[48]

Human-assisted computation
The term "human computer" has been recently used by a group of researchers who refer to their work as
"human computation".[49] In this usage, "human computer" refers to activities of humans in the context of
human-based computation (HBC).

This use of "human computer" is debatable for the following reason: HBC is a computational technique
where a machine outsources certain parts of a task to humans to perform, which are not necessarily
algorithmic. In fact, in the context of HBC most of the time humans are not provided with a sequence of
exact steps to be executed to yield the desired result; HBC is agnostic about how humans solve the
problem. This is why "outsourcing" is the term used in the definition above. The use of humans in the
historical role of "human computers" for HBC is very rare.

See also

Mathematics portal

Difference engine – an early automatic mechanical calculator designed to replace human

computers
List of obsolete occupations
Mathematical Tables Project – a project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) that
employed human computers
Mentat – fictional human computers in the Dune universe
Women in computing

Notes
1. "computer". Oxford English Dictionary (Third ed.). Oxford University Press. March 2008.
"1613 'R. B.' Yong Mans Gleanings 1, I have read the truest computer of Times, and the
best Arithmetician that ever breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number."
2. Turing 1950.
3. Napier, John (1889) [1619]. The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms (https://
www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/21654776/the-construction-of-the-wonderful-canon-of-l
ogarithms/Nepero/ConstructioEnglishVersion.pdf) (PDF). Translated by Macdonald, William
Rae. Edinburgh: Blackwood & Sons. "Also available on Wikisource"
4. Grier 2005, pp. 22–25.
5. Grier 2005, pp. 29–30.
6. Grier 2005, pp. 30.
7. Grier 2005, pp. 29.
8. Grier 2005, pp. 31.
9. Grier 2005, pp. 61.
10. Grier 2005, pp. 50.
11. Grier 2005, pp. 50–51.
12. Grier 2005, pp. 54.
13. Grier 2005, pp. 81.
14. Grier 2005, pp. 77.
15. Grier 2005, pp. 76.
16. Grier 2005, pp. 76–77.
17. Grier 2005, pp. 82–83.
18. Grier 2005, pp. 82.
19. Sobel 2016, p. 31.
20. Sobel 2016, p. 105.
21. Evans 2018, p. 23.
22. Sobel 2016, p. 37.
23. Sobel 2016, p. 181.
24. Grier 2005, pp. 106.
25. Grier 2005, pp. 106–107.
26. Grier 2005, pp. 107–108.
27. Grier 2005, pp. 108.
28. Grier 2005, pp. 110.
29. Grier 2005, pp. 111.
30. Campbell-Kelly & Croarken 2003, p. 10.
31. Grier 2005, pp. 173.
32. Beenakker, C. "Lorentz and the Zuiderzee Project" (https://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/
zuiderzee/zuiderzee.html). Instituut-Lorenz for Theoretical Physics, University of Leiden.
Retrieved November 19, 2015.
33. Hunt 1998, pp. xiii–xxxvi.
34. Roache 1998.
35. Grier, David Alan (March 1, 2001). "Human Computers: The First Pioneers of the
Information Age". Endeavour. 25 (1): 28–32. doi:10.1016/S0160-9327(00)01338-7 (https://d
oi.org/10.1016%2FS0160-9327%2800%2901338-7). PMID 11314458 (https://pubmed.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/11314458).
36. Light 1999, p. 459.
37. Kean 2010, p. 10.
38. Grier 2005, pp. 151–152.
39. Grier 2005, pp. 164.
40. Grier 2005, pp. 166.
41. Grier 2005, pp. 190.
42. Grier 2005, pp. 195.
43. Howell, Elizabeth (January 24, 2017). "The Story of NASA's Real 'Hidden Figures' " (https://
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-story-of-nasas-real-ldquo-hidden-figures-rdquo/).
Scientific American. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
44. Evans 2018, pp. 24.
45. "DOROTHY VAUGHAN (nee JOHNSON)" (https://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/crgis/images/2/29/Vau
ghanBio.pdf) (PDF). NASA. February 3, 2016.
46. "H.R.1396 - Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act" (https://www.congress.gov/bill/1
16th-congress/house-bill/1396?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr1396%22%5D%7D&
r=1&s=1). Congress.gov. November 8, 2019. Retrieved November 9, 2019.
47. Light 1999, p. 462.
48. ENIAC Programmers Project – Awards (http://www.eniacprogrammers.org/awards.shtml)
Archived (https://archive.today/20130414161648/http://www.eniacprogrammers.org/awards.
shtml) April 14, 2013, at archive.today
49. Law & von Ahn 2011.

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Evans, Claire L. (2018). Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (h
ttps://books.google.com/books?id=C8ouDwAAQBAJ&q=9780735211759&pg=PP1). New
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Grier, David Alan (May 11, 2001). The Human Computer and the Birth of the Information Age (ht
tps://web.archive.org/web/20160308075109/http://www.philsoc.org/2001Spring/2132transcri
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Grier, David Alan (2005). When Computers Were Human (https://web.archive.org/web/2006082
1120909/http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7999.html). Princeton University Press.
ISBN 978-0-691-09157-0. Archived from the original (http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/title
s/7999.html) on August 21, 2006. Retrieved January 24, 2006.
Hayles, Katherine N. (2005). My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226321479. Excerpt (http://www.pres
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Hunt, J. C. R. (1998). "Lewis Fry Richardson and His Contribution to Mathematics, Meteorology
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Light, Jennifer S. (1999). "When Computers Were Women". Technology and Culture. 40 (3):
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Helped Win the Space Race. New York: William Morrow and Company.
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Wolverton, Mark (Fall 2011). "Girl Computers" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130324142608/ht
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External links
Early NACA human computers at work (https://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/People/HT
ML/E49-0053.html), photograph, October 1949.
 The Age of Female Computers (http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/12/skinner.htm)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20060616074110/http://www.thenewatlantis.com/arch
ive/12/skinner.htm) June 16, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, by David Skinner
Sonoma State University (http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Pickering/Pick
eringRefs.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20210422213305/http://www.phys-ast
ro.sonoma.edu/brucemedalists/Pickering/PickeringRefs.html) April 22, 2021, at the Wayback
Machine
Wellesley (http://www.wellesley.edu/Astronomy/Annie/career.html)
Description of model of H. A. Lorentz (http://lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/zuiderzee/zuiderze
e.html)

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