Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words With Nathalia Holt 20160710

On book tvs afterwards, Science Writer Nathalia Holt chronicles the lives of an elite group of people who worked at the jet Propulsion Laboratorys in the 40s and 50s. She talks about her book, rise of the rocket girls with lisa grande of the system is sony and national air and space museum. Host thank you very much Nathalia Holt for being here with me to talk about your research and your new book about the socalled rocket girls of the jet Propulsion Laboratory before thank you for having me. Host i would like to begin by asking you how you discovered this group of women and how you decided to write about this largely forgotten pieceof American History . Guest its a strange coincidence. I came across this story circa 2010 and my husband and i were expecting our first baby and we were having a really difficult time coming up with names. Finally my husband suggested Eleanor Francis and i wasnt sure until i did what parents do these days and i googled the name and what popped up was a woman named Eleanor Francis kelly. There was this beautiful picture of her black and white taken at nasa in the 1960s where shes accepting an award and i was stunned by this picture because i had no idea that women worked at nasa at the time, much less as a scientist so i really wanted to learn more and i found out that actually Eleanor Francis was not alone, there was a large group of women who worked at this jet Propulsion Laboratory starting in the 1940s and they were known as computers. So at a time before the digital devices we have today, a computer meant simply a person who computes. Host how did this group of women come together at a time when women in technology such as the engineering done at jpl was a rarity . Guest it ended up being an all women group simply because of a woman named macy roberts and macy roberts started at the jet Propulsion Laboratory very near its inception and in 1942 she was made supervisor of the computers. And while she had men that applied for the job, she decided she wanted to make it all women and her thinking here is that she wanted to make it about Cohesive Groups, she wanted it to feel like a family but she also was worried that if she hired men they wouldhave difficulty listening to her because she was a woman. Host interesting. What did this group of Women Computers do and why did this particular job and up filled primarily by women . Did this happen elsewhere in the space industry during the cold war . Before this group of women was pretty unique at jpl in that they were, they had a woman supervisor and this very powerful group at jpl and they spent their days doing in the beginning they did a lot of trajectories so they calculated the potential of different rocket propellants and they did trajectories for many of the early vessels, they worked on the corporal and the sergeant and then things changed when the space race happened and when nasa was formed and then these women roles began changing, ended up becoming the last first computer programmers and they had these incredibly long careers at nasa, 40, 50 years, one of them still works at nasa today, her name is sue finley and shes nasas longestserving female employee, shes been there for 58 years though their careers are very unique among nasa centers although there were other women working on computers at other nasa centers, their jobs were quiteprofessional and the careers they had quite unique. You mentioned a moment ago Eleanor Prentice and how you found her looking for names for your children. Im wondering because you have this wonderful story about her in the introduction to your book. It sounds to me like this group of extremely large and you focus on the very specifics of that, for instance Eleanor Francis helene does not come back in your book so im wondering how do you choose a particular subset of women that you speak about the book because you do so in such wonderful detail, personal detail so how do you choose what ones to focus on and why . Guest it wasnt easy because there were so many women that had great contributions and theres many women who held a variety of roles at the jet Propulsion Laboratory and at nasa to for that matter. But i chose to focus on this group of women because they were there from the very beginning , because their careers were so long and you know, i have the good fortune of being able to meet many of these women in person and get to hear their stories from them. Its a wonderful thing that they still know each other, they are still friends today and i really had a wonderful time hearing their stories from them and their vivid memories of what life was like in the 1950s and 1960s at nasa so yes, thats how i ended up choosing this one group of women and i focus my story on a few women who had such an influential role. Host were you mostly going off interviews, personal interactions with these women or were you also working with someone, what was your process in getting to the bottom of their stories . Guest i was lucky to have the help of archivists and historians at the jet Propulsion Laboratorys, they were just wonderful in helping find all the documents they needed , i was lucky to be able to spend time in their archives and get their assistance but in terms of actually getting stories from women, this really proved essential because while the archives were very helpful in helping photograph, having these documents there was so much of a story that really had been lost because no one had documented the womens role in this part of history. Soi was fortunate to be able to do interviews with the women themselves. So often we see in his history that the voices of women and people of color are subsumed under dominant voices during that time. So the fact that you are doing this bit of archiving is incredibly important and i think an extra benefit of you writing this book so thank you for doing that. So i am curious, one of i think the unsungcharacters in the story, one of the most important characters is really the data these women work with. The Women Computers, their daytoday lives are intertwined with the process of interpretation of data and you have this wonderful moment in your preface where you talk about raw data that shimmered with beauty in your hands and i was wondering if you could speak a littlebit more about the data itself, what kind of data these women were working with. How that work with data contributed to the Overall Mission at jpl and how this work with data may have changed over the course of a halfcentury or so that you cover in this book. Guest therescertainly a lot of data to cover. It starts out in a very simple way where we are learning about different propellants, these early missiles, a lot of the calculations that were done on the sergeants which is a missile that was developed in the 50s. I found it very interesting because that missile ended up really not being that important in a military sense but it ends up being very important later on in 1958 when we see explorer 1 launched so it was interesting to see how the womens calculations on many of these early missiles and early fuels and it up being very important when we get into the space race. And then of course the data changes so we go from calculating trajectories and missiles and propellants and looking atspacecraft. And theres so many wonderful stories about early probes, the moon and to the planets. One of my favorite pieces of calculation work actually was from the voyagers and this was such an interesting story to me because of the way it was done so in the early 70s, they were at jpl planning a grand tour of the solar system and because of funding reasons, this ended up getting caught and what one of the computers and the number of the engineers did at jpl was they came in during the weekend and ended up finding a way to plot a trajectory that would allow them to take this one mission to jupiter and extended so that all of the planets of the solar system could be included and it was just fascinating to me how they were able to calculate these with gravity assists and being able to plot this trajectory and they kept it hushhush because there was so many concernsfrom nasa about going over budget. So its hard to focus on only one piece of data when its a book that covers of course many decades of data and such a fantastic mission. Host sure and i think this is relevant to some of the current debates about crude verses on crude Space Missions and Planetary Science versus Orbit Research so i think this speaks to the current debate very well. I think that in looking at, one of my favorite parts of this book is looking at these women who are referred to as computers who first consulted computers area you sign post their stories with moments in the history of computing leading up to the modern electronic personal computer so im wondering if you could tell me a little bit about how you see your book fitting into the larger history of computing during the 20th century . Guest its interesting to me because when i first started researching the story i assumed that it would be the computers that outlasted the women and then this happened at other nasa centers, you see that the people who held jobs as computers often lost these jobs when ibm came in and this didnt happen at jpl and instead it was the computers that were constantly changing, the digital ones and it was the women that stayed constant and what i really loved were some of the relationships they had with these devices area i was surprised to learn how much mistrust there were of ibm 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 flare up, that really they didnt even want to use them on missions and its because of that you have this opportunity that the women at jpl see where they became the first computer programmers and so they have these kind of on relationships. One of my favorite is with an ibm 1627 women decide the name cora and she becomes one of the women of the group and she gets her own nameplate outside the door along with the nameplates that have all the other women working in the room so that relationship they have with technology is very interesting and it was fun to see that fall through the decades. Host its interesting given this focus on jpl during the robotics crap that will required in technology in order to send something out and obviously you were going to be sending people necessarily to jupiter or the Voyager Mission but given the distrust of the ibm machines within jpl and contracting trust in these devices on board the on crude spacecraft, its interesting and im wondering if you saw any tension there in the way that people at jpl, both women and men thought about their ideaof computers versus the way they thought about their robotic spacecraft . I did find that interesting. It was such a long process for ibm to gain their place that they certainly now occupied very well at jpl. And yes, that dynamic between the spacecraft they are building and the engineers that are watching rebuild at jpl where there is so much trust with what is going on in the spacecraft, so much attention into every detail and yet they still want to make sure there are humans behind doing all the calculations. So its funny that it took as long as it did for machines to take precedence over humans in these calculations and yet, i would say there is still an interestingdynamic happening even today at jpl. Its still, i think we tend to think of Space Exploration as something that is detached from humanity, its something done by machine, done by computers but its interesting to see how important people really are to that process. As the computers, i love the story about cora, its fantastic like she was gendered as a woman and given a womans name and was working with all theother computers, i thought that was a wonderful detail. Did the women ever have any anxiety that the computers, the ibm computers might replace their labor, being supplanted by the work of the computers or did they do different work . How was the labor divided betweenhuman computer and electronic computer. Guest there was a lot of fear of this and for good reason. They actually had several supervisors that would tell them, that would tell the women that were working on computers your jobs are going to be gone soon, ibms are going to replace you, were 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 that nasa centers all over so the fact that they were able to persist is quite amazing. Host it is amazing and the on the presence of Electronic Computers that may happen in different alternate universes have taken over their jobs, the fact that many of these women were able to persist in the time period when theexpectation 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 really remarkable because during this exact same time period, many women were being barred from working in the space industry in particular, im thinking of the early 1960s when a group of women attempted to be considered to be astronauts and were written off largely because of their expectation that investing in them would be a waste because they wouldeventually leave for marriage or childbirth. So i wondered why the story is so different . You have a few women were forced to leave or choose to leave upon getting pregnant. Why did these women persist . Why jpls story is it different than many others at nasa during this time period . Guest there are several reasons why but you are right. At that time it was a very small percentage. In 1960, only 25 percent of mothers worked outside the home and there was no Maternity Leave then so when 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 they had a female supervisor and so after Macey Roberts left, ellen lane became supervisor and she provided this very strong example of a working mother because she had to children and she was able to just 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 other places is pretty simple. She just made phone calls. She would call a woman after they had a child and ask them if they wanted to come back andshe had a very high success rate of getting women back after they had children. And the lab itself provided an environment that was very friendly for them. The cause you know, unlike other nasa centers that tended to be a bit more strict and tended to have a very military atmosphere, jpl always had this loose, very Academic Field to a lab and still does so at the time at other nasa centers, the women that worked as computers had to work a strict eight hour day with separates and that some of these centers they were even allowed to talk to each other. But at jpl, the women were able to shift their hours and coming early when they needed to, leave early when they needed to and basically be able to adjust their hours in a way that was very common to usnow, being able to have flextime at work but it was unusual then and of course they were still working very long hours , they worked all night when there was a launch. Their hours did get quite long so they also depended on each other and wonderful families so 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 lange who was purposely trying to make this wonderful environment for working mothers. Host its also true a lot of women would read this story today, a lot of working women and working mothers might read this tori and see Common Threads area i think with flextime aside, a lot of women across, if you look back, it takes a lot of trouble in balancing their work and their family lives area i know that you are a microbiologist and also a mother so i was wondering how much if any of your own experiences treading that balancing act factored in to a writing of this book . Guest it was interesting for me because you dont expect to have many similarities with women that are necessarily intheir 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 really, i enjoyed that part. That was very surprising to me and many times when i was having trouble balancing things i would think well, barbara paulsondid this in 1959 so surely i can do this today. Host you, in addition to these uplifting moments where you can point 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 sadness or failure, moments when that strange unusual set up at jpl failed to support the computers. For instance, you have one of the computers boyfriends who compels her to go to therapy. Why is she not married, why is she dedicated to her career which is a moment i thought, thats really awful for women, they are being forced to choose not only internally with their careers in some cases but also externally with their loved ones area im wondering if you could maybe go over some of the other external pressures that impacted the gpl computers in their careers beyond the expectations within the workplace. There certainly were a lot of expectations that were put on women at that time. And i found that over and over again, i think one of the most dramatic stories for me is that of Jeanette Lawson. She was the first africanamerican hired in 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 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 from jpl and from Macey Roberts and ended up becoming an engineer eventually but certainly the external pressures of geography and what that put on her were quite difficult and i found it quite sad when i learned about her background and yet still inspiring that she was able to overcome all that and realize her dream of becoming an engineer. Host im glad you brought up Jeanette Lawson because i thought her story was particularly compelling as one of the few women of color among the jpl computer group. When you mention the struggle she came up against, one of them you write about very compellingly in the book was that eventually she has to leave jpl because shes commuting, because he doesnt feel comfortable settling in pasadena which is predominantly white and therefore having to leave and go somewhere else closer to home where she feels more comfortable raising her family. So Jeanette Lawson and helen langer, the two women of color that you profile most directly in this book, were there other women of color at jpl during this time and how did their stories differ from their predominantly white counterparts . Helen lange, once she was made supervisor she really wanted to bring in many more women as engineers in jpl so in the late 60s, she basically started this campaign where she would find women who she thought were very bright, who had a lot of potential but didnt necessarily have the degrees needed to be hired as an engineer so she would bring them into hergroup , hired them as a computer and encourage them to go to night school and she found many women who had bachelors degrees and wanted to do engineering but were quite in the rightplace for it. And because of this, she was really able to fill the lab with women as engineers and she hired many minorities in this position and jpl is quite a special place thanks to helen lange and the work she did hiring. Host so in your understanding, and the research you did you come to the conclusion that jpl in addition to hiring perhaps more women than other nasa centers and centers for space industry during that time, they also in many ways more people of color and perhaps other places in the space industry during the cold war, is that correct . P7 i dont think thats true. I think other nasa centers hired many women as well and hired women of color but whats more unique about jpl were the careers they had and many other nasa centers i found that women were often fired by the late 50s or early 60s and this didnt happen at jpl. They ended up having very long careers there so thats what i really found was unique about that. Could you tell us a little bit about why women were being fired fromother centers . It was the advent of technology. Once ibm came in and many other nasa centers , they fired many of the people that worked as computers and these were often large groups of women, this was happening at nasa centers all over the country. Host so the computers at jpl really did have analogues of where to look atand maybe be concerned for their jobs but it sounds like they work. They felt pretty comfortable. Did you find in your research and speaking to these women that they were aware of whats happening elsewhere . Were they concerned about losing their jobs or did the culture of women, leading women at jpl give them a sense of security they may not have found elsewhere in the country . Guest they were definitely concerned about losing their jobs. They had men they worked with who basicallytold them that your jobs are in jeopardy , you guys are all going to be gone because of technology so there was certainly fear their and they managed to overcome this i think in large part because of the fact that they had a female supervisor who could really about for them and because of their relationships with many of their male colleagues. What happened that was unique at jpl that i found was many of their male colleagues would include the women on publication and this really was very uncommon at the time but it really boosted their careers quite a bit. Host that brings me to a question i have for you about the overall conclusions you make in your book so id like to quickly read a quote from the final chapter of the 1960 section of your book. While protesters were demanding equal rights for women across the country, the women at jpl had created their own equality area they formed a lab in their own image, building an environment amenable to women where their work and contributions were every bit as valued as those of their male counterparts and this is really a remarkable claim. Especially given the struggles and failures of women in the space industry elsewhere. And also given what you mentioned elsewhere in your book about the same arguments being made against women at jpl by the men, particularly you are going to leave if you get pregnant or getmarried. Im wondering in stating that the Computers Work was valued the same level as mens work, you mentioned they were included in publications. But im wondering beyond, what resonates to me is their name being on publications shows in a very specific way the economy, the production of knowledge they are involved with area that im wondering how you measured value beyond being included on papers because noting that the they are arguing that women shake jpl for themselves and to create this place of the quality is a very large claim to make, especially in the 1960s so if you could speak more about how you came to this conclusion of equal value, i would appreciate that. They certainly had a crucial role in these missions and i found when i talk to them, much of that value was how they saw themselves. It wasnt just in their colleagues, it wasnt that it was a lot of fun to write is an awfully bare except able for reader to follow. Net various possible and im not tied to them as i appreciate that very much. As i was reading this, i was making about by the current initiatives in american education, science and Technology Policy in the white house and women and girls to increase representation of women in stem fields and for those who are not aware of the act, that is fine, technology, engineering and. How do you think your boat can contribute to this ongoing dialogue of these initiatives to encourage women to work in fields in which they are traditionally underrepresented . Guest i hope it has a big influence. The situation with women, especially in the technology as a desperate situation. We need to bring more women into technology. My hope is that this dory evidence of that will be inspiring, serve as role models today. Its important that we recognize their contributions because of course they deserve it. It is very overdue that they get this recognition of their work. But i also hope that it will serve as an inspiration for the young girls interested in science today. That being said, this book really covers such a vast breadth of materials. I assume that a few things fell on your floor debate you couldnt fit. I was wondering if you could tell me if you are perhaps your favorite stories organic goat that didnt make it to the final cut of the boat. Guest such a hard question. So many great tories. Yeah, theres a lot of great ones there. I was really surprised i talk about jude under in the book which is the forerunner to the First American light. I was really surprised at how much work went into that. I discussed it briefly in the book, but the detail that i learned from the women working on it was quite incredible. This was before us but make even launched, they were strapping together with the women called baby sergeant. These are kind of a model of the sergeant missile putting them in stages on top of a red stone rocket and they really wanted to launch the First American satellite and they eventually do. I was shocked that they could then assault a year before us but nick was launched. So the learning about the detail and much of the trickery that happened there. They were working on all of this when they were supposed to. They were supposed to be only looking at those columns for different rockets at the time that that they were designing a spacecraft and looking at all these different rocket potential is yet i found that part of the story just fascinating. That is pretty remarkable that they were able to keep so many things quiet. Particularly at jpl which has kind of if not his area, especially during the red scare of losing people to the political concerns. For instance, frank molina both had to leave because of the red scare. And so, it seems remarkable that a lot of these projects continue to be organized a little bit under the radar. Do you have a sense for your subjects are involved in keeping some of these i dont want to call them secret projects, but under the radar project for in view of the powers that eat to keep them going. Yes ,com,com ma there were different security clearance is not the time. You know, this is all of the 19th of these. Now things have changed. But in the 1950s there were different colors for badges and different security clearance is. The women that were as computers have the highest security clearance in the lab and they would keep all their documents locked up in a steel container. They had to always be on call them if there was a breakin in the lab. They were part of this. What i found funny about jpl is how much scientists and engineers have done being centers a key and they continue to do this over the decade. I thought this later on with the voyagers, which is also very sneaky. They just couldnt continue to push the limits of what can be done for exploration. It seems i think it might be remarkable to some people listening that so much of what is done at these centers is tinkering. It feels like it should be bureaucratic and very specific. There still is a place with a lot of looking around and a lot little less cut and dried in terms of procedure and what they are working on. He did a fantastic job of describing not particularly during the lead up to the First American satellite. Thats another part of your book that i really enjoyed it that you have, why you tell the stories of these women, you are also telling a history of the american base program. So i am wondering if you have, imagine your surprise about finding out that we could meet in the soviet union to the first satellite sputnik. For there any other surprises you found in your research that were unexpected about the history of the American Space program that was revealed through your research on these women . I was surprised how many failures there were early on. It is very sad to learn about the atmosphere and what it was like in the early lunar probes that were sent out. The rangers series, in particular, just one failure after another. It was just so painful to learn what the effect was in the lab. Just this feeling that we have to get on the moon. We have to do this to pave the way for astronauts to go there at some point. There is kind of a strained tension there because you had many engineers who sort of felt like the moon was too easy, but it wasnt interesting enough. What we were doing there wasnt that im typically important and what we should be doing is focusing our probes to venus and mars. You actually have these competing teams working on that, that were looking at both projects. Because of this, i found that the initiative for the lunar probes often got left behind and there just wasnt the same excitement to work on these missions. And then of course things can become desperate. People in up losing their jobs because theres been so many failures at the rangers series. This is an interesting part of history about how difficult it really was to get a probe up on the moon. Where did the excitement when they lost their excitement, was it just another part over there at their fact is that play. There was a lot of tension between engineers and scientists at that time. I found that an interesting dynamic that continues today at jpi because there was a feeling for many sign to that they wanted to explore parts of the men that would be more interesting. They didnt want to just look at the flat landing places. Of course, that is what the probes needed to do. They needed to go into the sea of tranquility and places for astronauts could actually land. So it was interesting to learn about that and how they dealt with this and the mission certainly go go up in complexity from their. You on the Ranger Program, you remind me what this tension between crude prices that include mission during this time. I think one of the interesting tiein to your book history and a leg up to president kennedys announcement that we were going to the moon, going to demand an to demand an abandoned people of the men was not a foregone conclusion. There were those that argue that the soviets are better at creating heavy lifting rocket, that we were better at creating Scientific Missions than that in shaping should make it instead of going to mars and catherine ada about mars. But in the end with the other politics, landing a man on the moon became the primary goal of the space race. So im wondering, you mentioned that the Ranger Program that the jpl staff worked on was intended to create the possibility of landing the first astronaut on the moon. I wonder if in doing that if they maintained their feeling there, that perhaps it was not necessarily the way to go for if they had other motivations behind working towards his projects. You mentioned theres achiness. Did you get a sense that there is still not as enthused about the human spacecraft and used that as a way to support what the workers cared about which was on crew spaceflight. I did get that fence. I got the feeling that it was the anchors based that was held in high regard, that was the work that was scientifically important, that needed to be pursued and that the crude spacecraft was not nearly as interest in. But you know, it was a balance. It was a balance between different interests. But i think is impressive is ultimately youre able to have both. Today of course, jpl is doing some Incredible Missions that are robotic. I would like to go back a little bit to the particular women that you read about in your book in the way that you write about them. As i mentioned, the book reads in a lot of ways as they collect a memoir and you have these wonderful details for instance one of the computers mishmash in her shoes and thought in the lead up to the next tour launch and the parties that they attended and their dates with their boyfriends and highs then. So i am wondering, if did you, in speaking to these women, did you find that they were just as interested in sharing with you these personal stories in addition to their work . You have some upsetting things in there i have to say. For in fence, the failure of sue finlays first pregnant the end that is kind of the moment that drives her to essentially work at jpl. These women have now put their stories out there. They put themselves out there through your boat. My question is how will it were they to tell the stories and have you spoken to them about how you presented them in this book for all to see and hear the israelis pacific windows into their lives in history . Yes, it is fortunate to become friends of these women and get to spend a lot of time with them. We talked a lot about this personal stories and how they would feel about stupidly went they lost the newborn, that is such a heartbreaking moment. It was a good story to tell because its important for other women to know that this happens. We talk about issues because its a sad tragedy. Sharing her story i thought was to her because she wanted other women to know what it was like, what it felt like, how it shaped her. It is an important part of our history. It was important to include that. A lot of these details make them silly such as mismatched shoes, but it all is an important part of the story and it was fun to learn these details. I think it also gives us some more insight into what it was like to be part of this mission and what it really felt like at the time. It really brings the story to life, the price especially a really take. Late you mentioned is the one who is the longestserving woman employee at nasa. There was a moment in the book that i thought was really interest and where she is at home after becoming a mother and his faith in strange malaise that no one seemed to pin point and eventually her psychologist suggests that should go back to work. I found not really surprising given that this is the main fix the. When she indeed unusual in this or did you find this story reveals perhaps a hidden threat of change in beliefs about women in the work place . Well, she was unusual because they werent very many working mothers at that time in the 1960s. Probably many women can relate to the experience of being home again with children and missing work and wanting to be upward. Even as a stayathome mother, part of turks. But i think can relate to. For her to have a hair past dollar you should return to work, that is definitely an issue appeared that didnt happen very often that. For her, it was absolutely the right decision and she made a career after that. Im glad she decided to return to work after having children. What is her title now . The idea of the human computer is completely obsolete. Women who started when she has a name of some thing that is now in a lack of technology, it is her title some of you may not have had the same education, but its at math that are such a blunt question or election of 1960s, all of the women were given a title just yet. The women were so excited about that. But what about sue finlay stories that the title was taken away. This happened in 2004. In 2004, nasa decided if you didnt have a bachelors degree, you couldnt be an engineer. Although she worked as a Systems Engineer at nasa inches nasa longestserving woman, the title of engineer was taken away that year and she was put on an hourly salary. It is really a terrible situation. Its horrible. It really shows kind of the lack of recognition for the decades of service these women have put him at jpl. It is something i hope this book will change. Sure. The time is right for there to be a movement to reverse the sue finlay is the motion. That seems like a real travesty given how much she has done for nasa over decades and decades and changing gender norms good thats pretty incredible. Were there other people curious if shes allowed in a or other women who continued to work at nasa who also saw their titles change or if this is a oneoff situation. She is in a unique situation because the other women mostly retired in the late 1990s before the world with put into effect. You have to remember they were hired at a time in the 40s and 50s when having a bachelors degree was not as a prerequisite, even from then to have these job. Even though many did have degrees, many of them didnt. They were exceptionally skilled at math. What i did find that i often found that setting was that lack of recognition taking place at anniversaries. One of those happened in 2008 during the fifth anniversary of americas first satellite. Nasa help this big gala and invited all of the people part of the mission. But they didnt invite the women are part of it. This i found very sad because this moment spent a lot of time working on the mission. Many were in the trawl room that night, including Barbara Paulsen is a critical part of the mission success. Host absolutely. Open with her counting down to the incredible moment. I didnt even know that this was a womans voice that was kind a during this crucial moment was monitoring what was happening and this was the one to say that there is success. Is that correct, she was the one to confirm that it had seated. She was the one calculating the trajectory. She was the one who is able to tell us the mission was finally a success. Just basically had a roomful of people people just waiting on match. Richard feynman, the famous physicist whose thenpresident standing beside her, looking over at her paper, so excited to learn if this is actually going to work or not. That is really incredible is something that i think your boat will really encapsulate both the book itself over just speaking about the forgotten stories of these women. The fact that she confirmed the success of the First American spacecraft is huge and it is surprising that its largely been forgotten and i am hope all that perhaps your book will be a First Step Towards reinstating the place of these women in the American Space program. I want to speak briefly wrote like to hear from you about the computers creating a womens space. Weve talked a bit about the Space Program and the jpl and the position at jpl for nasa. So you mention women and leadership created this space and in many ways in some cases reject good man who applied computers in the 50s and 60s. It sounded kind of similar to womens groups who came together later on to create womens spaces. I wonder if you got a sense that these women, what their intent was that they saw themselves as being part of a Larger Movement as time progresses and came to the fore or if they were just doing their own thing separate from what was going on the rest of the country. They didnt really see themselves as part of a feminist movement. They really just love their work at jpl. They felt that their jobs are the best jobs in the world. I heard over and over again they couldnt believe that they got to be here and i got to get paid for this work. They enjoyed it that much. Even though there was this Unusual Group of all women and they only hired women, they werent setting out to change history that way. That is actually a quote that i open the book with, a quote from sally ride who said they didnt come to nasa to make history. I think that encapsulate their attitude. They were there for the work. They are there because they love science, they loved matt and it just so happens that they did change history and they did make a really big impact on nasa. Sally ride is a complicated figure in the history and gender in the american factor. The women that you talk about in your book and sally ride, they were not primarily doing their jobs, but becomes feminist figures in the telling, particularly given their entries into fields where previously dominated by men. So you create a very nice park they are. A lot of them have retired. Do they still have their networks have come robbery connected to each other even in retirement or have they largely gone their separate ways . They are. They are still friends. They still talk to one another. It says a lot about what life was like at that time at jpl are they spent all their hours together working in all the social event too. This really made those friendships very strong. And 23rd teen, i organized a reunion of the women were i had women come from all over the country and it was such an honor to be there with bad and towards the lab and see all of these places they remembered and hear memories of what it was like. And also to his knee relationships with each other and that they really are still good friends today was quite inspiring. Youre able to get quite a few of them to come to the reunion. Did you have a large group . Yes, i believe it is 17 women. We just had a wonderful time going over the laboratory. When youre going through, did you run into other women and were they aware of who they were in contact with at the time . It would be interesting to see wellplanned and now, how they would react from an earlier era. Be not there were many women dare to remember because of course many of them work there up until the late 1990s. Many of them do remember this group. For the younger generation, the young women who werent hired and he didnt know that there were once a group of women called computers at the lab, it was pretty surprising to use the 50s are there for runners than the flood made their future possible at jpl. The it is an excellent outcome extremely accessible. I would highly recommend to anyone of any age interested in learning about a group of american women history hustlers have forgotten about. Thank you for being here to talk about. I very much enjoyed our conversation. Thank you very much. I enjoyed being here with you. Booktv recently visited capitol hill. I am reading the undaunted courage and sacrifice of Seal Team Six special operator adam brown. This is a book about chronicles. If flawed american who became an American Hero, who channeled some of his tourist six, which led to risky behavior into what made him a great warrior in defense of freedom for our country. Who recommended this book . A colleague of mine, congressman from the Central Valley of california. Hes a good personal friend of mine. We were eating dinner one night and he was very emotional talking about a book that he was reading. I was intrigued because i dont tell my friend david as a super emotional guy, but he clearly was impacted personally by this story. I asked him more about the book and he described it to me and i had to get a copy. Just like david i devoured the book. It was absolutely a page turner from the very first paragraph, which begins. The story begins by saying on march 17, 2010, navy Seal Team Six under adam brown woke up not knowing he was going to be killed later that he named in the hindu kush mountains of eastern end. 7000 miles away, his little boy woke up in virginia beach, virginia worried about his daddy. From that compelling introduction until the very last words of the book, you cant put it down because this is a story about overcoming personal challenges. It is about an American Hero and about the Courageous Service in the sacrifice of so many American Heroes who are fighting in the global war on terror. Done that. Andersen cooper and his mother, gloria vanderbilt, discuss their lives