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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGladys West, the "hidden figure" behind invention of GPS
She has FINALLY been inducted in the US Air Force Hall of Famehttps://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/422353-dr-gladys-west-the-hidden-figure-of-gps-inducted-into-air-force
Dr. Gladys West, a mathematician and one of the so-called Hidden Figures who was lesser known for her contributions to inventing GPS, has been inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame.
A ceremony was held in Wests honor at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, a local CBS affiliate reported on Tuesday. The induction is one of the Air Force's Space Commands highest honors.
West worked among a small group of women on computing for the U.S. military in the 1950s and 1960s, just before the era when the military began to usher in a wave of electronic systems, according to a news release from the Air Force Space Command Public Affairs office. That group was later depicted in the movie "Hidden Figures."
West began working at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory as a mathematician in 1956, where she also participated in an award-winning study that proved the regularity of Plutos motion relative to Neptune in the early 1960s, according to the release.
That's where West also programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch computer that delivered refined calculations for an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, a geoid, optimized for what would eventually become known across the world as the Global Positioning System (GPS) orbit, the release also states.
A ceremony was held in Wests honor at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, a local CBS affiliate reported on Tuesday. The induction is one of the Air Force's Space Commands highest honors.
West worked among a small group of women on computing for the U.S. military in the 1950s and 1960s, just before the era when the military began to usher in a wave of electronic systems, according to a news release from the Air Force Space Command Public Affairs office. That group was later depicted in the movie "Hidden Figures."
West began working at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory as a mathematician in 1956, where she also participated in an award-winning study that proved the regularity of Plutos motion relative to Neptune in the early 1960s, according to the release.
That's where West also programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch computer that delivered refined calculations for an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, a geoid, optimized for what would eventually become known across the world as the Global Positioning System (GPS) orbit, the release also states.
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Gladys West, the "hidden figure" behind invention of GPS (Original Post)
CousinIT
Dec 2018
OP
brush
(53,778 posts)1. Yet another example of why we should listen to black women.
Stellar
(5,644 posts)2. Another forgotten figures that you won't learn about in a history book.
suffragette
(12,232 posts)3. For every time we were told we could not do or be
this or that, there was a woman who had done it and been it. We just weren't told that until recently.
K&R