Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII(en.wikipedia.org)

66 pointsby jacquesmvor 4 Jahren33 comments

en.wikipedia.org

Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Secret_Rosies:_The_Female_%22Computers%22_of_WWII

39 comments

Okay so the Rosie name is apparently a reference[0] to Rosie the Riveter[1].

I was originally wondering if Rosie[2] from The Jetsons was named after these ladies as a reference, but apparently the "ie" spelling was a season 2 change and so probably unrelated.

0: http://www.topsecretrosies.com/

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter

2: https://thejetsons.fandom.com/wiki/Rosey

westurnervor 4 Jahren

Similar ones:

"Code girls : the untold story of the American women code breakers of World War II" (2017) https://g.co/kgs/CBSxQv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Girls

"Hidden Figures" (2016) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures https://g.co/kgs/m2fFvN

Women in science : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science

dralleyvor 4 Jahren

Also, the British Women Royal Naval Service serving in Western Approaches Tactical Unit during WWII, who developed a great number of extremely effective tactics for fighting U-boats, as well as effectively reverse engineering bits and pieces of German technology that had never been physically seen by analyzing the tactics of their employment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Approaches_Tactical_Un...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ

msoucyvor 4 Jahren

I loved Hidden Figures, but even more so I loved hearing stories of little girls who saw it and spent the next few days playing "Scientist". Showing history inspires the future.

testing7787vor 4 Jahren

pamelafoxvor 4 Jahren

I just started reading the Lady Astronaut sci-fi series last night, starting with "The Calculating Stars", and its main character is a female "computer". Really interesting perspective I haven't seen in sci-fi before.

stevenwoovor 4 Jahren

The acknowledgements at the end and bibliography/recommended reading list for her research was interesting, too.

dieselgatevor 4 Jahren

Cool post! I seem to remember reading some of Richard Feynman’s writing about this: people doing computations on cards and then “passing them on” to the next person - think it was during the Manhattan Project. It is phenomenal how far computing has come; i like hearing about people using punch cards for computing etc

mixmastamykvor 4 Jahren

The associated documentary is "free" to stream on Kanopy. We enjoyed it.

westurnervor 4 Jahren

"Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII" (2010) https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/122786 https://g.co/kgs/49A9bD

cmacleod4vor 4 Jahren

The "computers" we are familiar with were originally called "automatic computers" to distinguish them from the earlier human "computers". Later the "automatic" was dropped and forgotten.

sabootvor 4 Jahren

I'd be interested in a reference (preferrably historical) on how to do these computations by hand. Was it all done by looking up in evaluated function tables?

dangerfacevor 4 Jahren

The quotes around computers is kind of annoying because they are actual computers and the machines we use are "computers"

pipeline_peakvor 4 Jahren

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