| No, it wasn't. That was only a joke by Shapely [1]: > Pickering’s successor as director, Harlow Shapley, jokingly quantified the work in terms of the number of ‘kilo-girl hours’ it would take Pickering himself was teased for having a "harem". What is true is that there were a lot of human computers, and most of them were girls. I think Feynman, as you would expect from him, played a role in organizing some computer girls for the Manhattan project [2]: > So we set up this room with girls in it. Each one had a Marchant. But she was the multiplier, and she was the adder, and this one cubed, and we had index cards, and all she did was cube this number and send it to the next one. > We went through our cycle this way until we got all the bugs out. Well, it turned out that the speed at which we were able to do it was a hell of a lot faster than the other way, where every single person did all the steps. We got speed with this system that was the predicted speed for the IBM machine. The only difference is that the IBM machines didn't get tired and could work three shifts. But the girls got tired after a while. [1]: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/an-astronomical-feat/ [2]: https://www.f.waseda.jp/sidoli/Feynman_2003.pdf#page=15 |