The Age of Female Computers David Skinner

2 2 The Age of Female Computers David Skinner oday, mathematics and com- problems had to be broken up into puter science often appear discrete, simple parts and done by Tas the province of geniuses hand. Where scads of numbers need- working at the very edge of human ed computing—for astronomical ability and imagination. Even as purposes at the Royal Observatory in American high schools struggle to Greenwich, England, or to establish employ qualified math and science the metric system at the Bureau du teachers, American popular culture Cadastre in Paris—such work was has embraced math, science, and com- accomplished factory-style. In his puters as a mystic realm of extraordi- book When Computers Were Human, nary intellectual power, even verging a history of the pre-machine era in on madness. Movies like A Beautiful computing, David Alan Grier quotes Mind, Good Will Hunting, and Pi all Charles Dickens’s Hard Times to cap- present human intelligence in the ture the atmosphere of such work- esoteric symbolism places: “a stern of long, indecipher- When Computers Were Human room with a deadly able, but visually by David Alan Grier statistical clock in Princeton ~ 2005 ~ 424 pp. captivating equa- it, which measured $35 (cloth) tions. One has to every second with think of such prosaic activities as a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid.” paying the mortgage and grocery The most famous modern exam- shopping to be reminded of the quiet ple of such work is probably Los and non-revelatory quality of rudi- Alamos, where scientists’ wives were mentary arithmetic. Which is not recruited in the early stages to com- to put such labor down. Adding the pute long math problems for the price of milk and eggs in one’s head Manhattan Project. is also brain work, and we should The social history of pre-machine never forget the central place of computing is also interesting in light mere calculation in the development of contemporary debates about gen- of more sophisticated areas of human der and scientific achievement, and knowledge. here Grier’s reconsideration of the Long before the dawn of calcula- past sheds useful light on the pres- tors and inexpensive desktop com- ent. Resigned Harvard president puters, the grinding work of large Lawrence Summers became an aca- 96 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. THE AGE OF FEMALE COMPUTERS demic outcast after speculating that understand the desire to correct past there might be an “intrinsic” basis orthodoxies about the female mind for the unequal numbers of men and with new ones. But even as we right- women engaged in science and engi- ly decry a past when even the most neering at the university level. The talented women were prevented from idea that men and women are dif- pursuing math and science in the ferent creatures, with distinct drives most prestigious posts, we should and ways of thinking, is apparently remember—and honor—the crucial so radical that even to raise it leads to role of women in advancing mathe- the academic guillotine. And yet only matical and scientific knowledge one a few decades ago, it was assumed by detailed calculation at a time. even the most civilized societies that women were not fit for serious intel- t the beginning of the long line lectual pursuits, especially scientific Aof women who made their marks ones. The occasional female endowed as human computers was Nicole- with truly extraordinary talent occu- Reine Lepaute. Like many women pied the unfortunate position of the featured in Grier’s book, Lepaute George Eliot character who tells enjoyed a personal connection to her son: “You may try—but you can the intellectual world, allowing her never imagine what it is to have a to gain experience with scientific man’s force of genius in you, and yet matters in spite of conventions that to suffer the slavery of being a girl.” warned women away from science. Note that even this extraordinary She owed her education to the for- character, created by an intellectually bearance of understanding parents; accomplished, great female novelist, her freedom to pursue an intellectual refers to genius as something par- career to an obliging husband; and ticularly male. her professional position to Joseph- In the history of computing, the Jérôme de Lalande, her longtime humbler levels of scientific work were scientific collaborator. open, even welcoming, to women. In a book published in 1705, using Indeed, by the early twentieth cen- Isaac Newton’s new calculus, the tury computing was thought of as English gentleman-astronomer women’s work and computers were Edmond Halley identified and pre- assumed to be female. Respected dicted the return of the comet even- mathematicians would blithely tually named after him. But it was approximate the problem-solving the French mathematician Alexis- horsepower of computing machines Claude Clairaut, along with Lalande in “girl-years” and describe a unit of and Lepaute, who first computed the machine labor as equal to one “kilo- date of the comet’s perihelion with girl.” In this light, one can surely any precision in 1757, predicting SPRING 2006 ~ 97 Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. DAVID SKINNER it would occur in the spring of the be done in parallel by different indi- following year. Sitting “at a com- viduals.” mon table in the Palais Luxembourg Mme. Lepaute was central to this using goose-quill pens and heavy effort, if largely unrewarded with linen paper,” writes Grier, the three professional position and prestige. friends slowly computed the course Lalande hired her as his assis- of Halley’s Comet along a parabola- tant when he became the editor of shaped orbit, reducing the math to an Connaissance des Temps, an astronomi- extraordinary series of baby steps. cal almanac, where together they Lalande and Lepaute focused on prepared tables predicting the posi- the orbits and gravitational pulls of tions of various celestial bodies. She Jupiter and Saturn (the three-body performed valuable but largely unap- problem), while Clairaut focused on preciated work. the comet’s orbit. “With the perspec- tive of modern astronomy,” Grier alf a century later and an ocean writes, “we know that Clairaut did Haway, Maria Mitchell would not account for the influences of play the next part of the willing Uranus and Neptune, two large plan- female computer supporting the bold ets that were unknown in 1757.” designs of male scientists. In the Still, the result of their number- 1840s, as American manufacturing crunching was a tenfold improve- swelled to claim some 25 percent of ment in accuracy over Halley’s pre- the economy and American pride vis- diction, if still not perfect. When the à-vis Europe launched a new era of comet reached its perihelion just a economic and political competition, a couple of days shy of the two-month movement took hold to establish an window in which Clairaut and col- American nautical almanac. Lacking leagues said it would, Clairaut’s com- such a publication, claimed one sup- puting method was ridiculed by one porter, “our absent ships could not of the great intellectuals of the day, find their way home nor those in our Jean d’Alembert, one of the editors ports grope to sea with any certainty of the Encyclopédie and himself an of finding their way back again.” The astronomer, who called the calcula- almanac’s chief mathematician was tions more “laborious than deep.” But Harvard professor Benjamin Pierce, this has not been the verdict of his- while the computing staff consisted tory. “Beyond the simple accuracy of of several students and amateurs. his result,” writes Grier, “Clairaut’s Mitchell was the only woman in the more important innovation was the group. The daughter of a banker and division of mathematical labor, the amateur astronomer, she was not recognition that a long computation some anonymous savant: her discov- could be split into pieces that could ery of a new comet in 1847 brought 98 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. THE AGE OF FEMALE COMPUTERS her fame and a medal from the king social inquiry. Computing followed of Denmark. Mitchell herself felt the growth of the social sciences: the no need to announce her discovery, effort to move away from broad ideas mentioning it only to her father, who and conceptual investigations toward quickly checked to see if the comet empirically-based methodologies in had been claimed by anyone else pursuit of a scientific knowledge of and then insisted on publicizing her human affairs. accomplishment. Francis Galton looked to mathe- Mitchell proved an able computer, matics to help prove Darwin’s theory not out of place among the gentle- of natural selection. In one inves- men who filled this minute trade. tigation, he gathered crude data on She went on to become the first African women “endowed,” he wrote female professor of astronomy at to his brother, “with that shape which Vassar College, gaining some of the European milliners so vainly attempt recognition and opportunities that to imitate.” Returning to England, Lepaute never did. The tide was Galton worked for the “Committee indeed slowly turning in women’s for Conducting Statistical Inquiries favor, though far from decisively. In Into the Measurable Characteristics the two decades following the Civil of Plants and Animals,” where such War, Grier reports, women went efforts to support Darwinism came from holding one out of six hun- under the powerful influence of Karl dred office jobs to one in fifty. The Pearson, who introduced a break- Harvard Observatory in particular through formula for correlation.

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