Download Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race AudioBook Free
The remarkable true report of the dark-colored girl mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel a few of America's greatest successes in space. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slip rules, and adding machines to compute the numbers that would launch rockets and astronauts into space. Among these problem solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, a few of the brightest brains of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching mathematics in the South's segregated general population schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World Conflict II, when America's aeronautics industry is at dire need of anyone who had the right products. Suddenly these overlooked math whizzes had shots at jobs worthy of their skills, plus they responded to Uncle Sam's call, moving to Hampton, Virginia, and the interesting, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Lab. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required these to be segregated off their white counterparts, the ladies of Langley's all-black Western world Processing group helped America achieve one of the items it desired most: a decisive win above the Soviet Union in the Cool Conflict and complete domination of the heavens. Starting in World Conflict II and moving through to the Cold Conflict, the civil rights movement, and the area race, Hidden Numbers follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's ideal successes. It chronicles their occupations over almost three ages as they confronted problems, forged alliances, and used their intellects to change their own lives - and their country's future.
