Coding Your Way to a Computer Science Career

When men left to fight in World War II (1939-1945), women (including, for the first time, African American women) were hired for jobs typically reserved for men, including “human computers.” These individuals completed intricate calculations manually. A government agency called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)—now known as NASA—hired hundreds of female human computers to figure out complicated calculations like paths of a spacecraft. Over time, these women helped create code for the first machine computers, which could do the same calculations faster and more accurately. Thanks to the work of these early computer scientists, the United States was able to send its first astronauts into orbit and eventually reach the Moon.