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“Hey Siri—Directions to the Earth and Spirit Center.”
Or maybe the doctor’s office. Or Rocky Mountain National Park! You name it, and your trusty GPS will guide you to that exact spot. Just about anywhere in the world. It’s wondrous!
What few people realize is that a brilliant Black female mathematician was behind development of the technology that came to be Siri’s confident voice.
Gladys West, who was born in 1930 to Virginia sharecroppers and later earned multiple degrees in Mathematics and Science from the HBCU, Virginia State College, started out teaching high school. In 1956, though, she joined the US Navy as a mathematician and computer programmer/coder. At the Naval Proving Ground in Dalgren, Virginia, she participated in an award-winning study that proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune. From that experience she was promoted to project manager for the SEASAT radar altimetry project. SEASAT was the first satellite that could remotely sense oceans. As project manager, she oversaw a team of five people who programmed an IBM computer that was significantly faster than other machines at the time. This computer, the 7030 Stretch, was able to provide calculations for a precise geodetic (curved surface) Earth model. The data was used by the military to accurately fire missiles. But later, it came to be of peaceful use to most everyone, as the technology was a building block for creating the Global Positioning System!
Learn more about this remarkable woman in this video:
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