WEBVTT - Part One: When Women Were Computers: A Tale of Space and Math 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:03.119 Chloe, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff? 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:07.360 Your favorite podcast? That well, it's actually just your favorite podcast. UM. 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:09.560 I know you love all of your podcasts equally, but 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:12.400 basic you love this one a little bit more. I'm 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:14.560 your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and I'm ready to tell you 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.920 all about cool people. And one of those cool people 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:19.880 I'm going to tell you about is this week's guest, 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:22.959 Bridget Todd, who is a feminist and activist and the 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:25.600 host of the show There Are No Girls on the Internet, 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.000 which is also allowed to be your favorite podcast. How 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:31.600 are you doing, Bridget, I'm good. I'm so excited to 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:36.040 be here. And we've got Sophie on the call to Um, 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:38.919 how are you Sophie as our producer, How are you doing, Sophie? 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:45.920 I'm doing I'm doing, Margaret. That's all I got for you. Yeah. Okay, 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.760 So today I want to talk about computers and space, 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:53.720 and I'm gonna call this episode When Women Were Computers, 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.520 because we're going to talk about how computer used to 0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:00.200 be a job description. But when I started looking into that, 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.440 I started turning up more and more weird ship. So, 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:06.479 in addition to this being a story about women computers, 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:11.320 both white and black. It's also about abolitionist astronomers, religious 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:13.720 fanatics who are trying to raise the dead as well 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:19.200 as explore the universe, bisexual goth rockets, scientists, and a 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:21.119 gay man who saved millions of lives in World War 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:23.080 Two and was oppressed as hell by the government that 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.200 he just saved. And I'm sure I'm leaving more stuff out. 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.280 It's a weird story today, but I think it's gonna 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.880 be a cool one to bear with me. Oh, this 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.679 is right up my alley. I love talking about how 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:40.240 women used to be the the o g computers like us, 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:45.880 you know, yeah, I like, I don't even know. I 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:47.560 was probably in my thirties when I figured out that 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:49.520 computer was used to be a job description, and I 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:52.560 grew up a like computer kid, you know, I was 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.200 like interested in computers from whatever. Anyway, I want to 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.960 start with a quote from Stephen J. Gould, who was 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.200 an evolutionary biolog just a science educator. And it's a 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:03.880 quote people have heard before, but I feel like it's 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.080 relevant to kind of frame what we're talking about today. 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.679 I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:13.680 of Einstein's brain than then the near certainty that people 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.440 of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:22.000 and sweatshops, and because so the show cool people who 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.000 did cool stuff, it's it's not about heroes. Like I 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:27.480 don't want to just be like this person is the 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.760 single best person anytime I'm talking about someone. And I 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.880 really basically hate the great man theory of history that 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:39.160 says that history was just moved forward by single spectacular individuals. Rather, 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:42.720 I really like that the accurate story, which is that 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.480 ship gets done by a thousand hands doing the work 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:50.880 together and um including spectacular individuals, but it's not solely them, 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.880 and it's absolutely not them working alone. So like, I 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:56.600 don't know, Einstein was smart at fun, right, but he 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:58.280 wasn't the only person as smart as fuck. And there 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.000 are so many people who are artists funk who are 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:05.080 prevented by systemic barriers from exercising their talents and contributing 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:06.840 in the way that they would otherwise be able to. 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.000 So today I'm basically excited to talk about smartest fun 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.520 people who had to push past systemic barriers and then 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:17.120 advanced human knowledge by leaps and bounds. I love that. 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.240 I love that idea that I don't know. There's something 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.680 about engaging with history in this way where the people 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:28.200 that you admire have to be hero figures. I understand 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.080 the inclination to to lionize and hero eze these people, 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:36.480 but then you have this really surface engagement with them, 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:40.200 like you don't. They don't get to be the full, messy, flog, complex, 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:42.680 dynamic people that we know they are. They get to 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:44.680 be like a stick around a notebook, right, And how 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:48.040 boring is that? Yeah? Totally yeah, and like and the 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:50.840 warts and all thing kind of like keeps us locked 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:52.400 out of it because we're like, oh, well, I'm not 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.240 as cool as that person because I did bad stuff 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:57.520 when I was a teenager, or I don't know, I 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.480 lose my temper sometimes or whatever the thing is, um, 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:03.880 you know, being able to like, yeah, I really want 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:05.760 to try and warts in all things as much as 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:10.320 I can. And the two biggest warts that need to 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.240 be talked about before we talk about anything has to 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.440 do with space are the fact that a lot of 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:16.560 what I'm gonna be talking about our accomplishments that are 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:20.560 claimed by two nations, neither of which do I have 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.080 any love for. One of those nations is the United 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:29.160 States of America, and one of them is the the USSRUM. 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.960 I love the just straight up like fuck the USA energy, 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.880 you just ground us in. Yeah, and it's not because 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:40.479 it's not because I'm like, oh well, if you hate 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:42.960 the USA, you love the USSR. Like, no, they're they're 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:47.240 both bad things, like hate them both. Yeah, but but 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.320 cool people within those structures figured out how to advance 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.400 human knowledge as best as they could. Yeah, I don't know. 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:57.000 And so most of these people get talked about in 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.200 patriotic terms. But as far as I can tell, most 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:02.159 of these people, and I'll mark some who did, most 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.240 of these people did not see things in patriotic terms. 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.800 They saw things basically. I mean, they care about science 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.680 by and large more than anything else. But I'm I'm 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:12.960 cutting curious, Bridget, since you you do a lot of 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.800 work around this sort of thing, Like, how do you 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:21.200 handle talking about people who do good things within bad frameworks? 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.239 You know, like like people like now we're all stock 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:27.039 working these capitalist jobs and things like that, or you know, 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.160 all the science that ends up being used by governments, 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:34.520 by by forces of colonization and all that. Ship. Yeah, 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.640 what a good question. I think it's really complicated and 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:39.400 I guess I try to remember kind of like you 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:43.280 just pointed out, Margaret, that we're talking about people within systems, right, 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.120 So like I'm an anti capitalist. I don't really funk 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.920 with our government like that, Like I'm consider myself a radical, 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:51.200 but I'm still living in the United States, and so 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:53.400 I still have to engage in commerce. They still have to, 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.440 you know, do all the machinations that come with living 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:02.600 in a white supremacist like how Herrow patriarchy fucked up society, 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.080 and so I just try to I I'm it's really 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:08.080 easy for me to give myself that grace, and I 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:11.000 tried to extend that to the people that I'm like 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:14.040 reading about and and hearing about and learning about, because 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:18.080 you know, there are also individuals who did cool ship, 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.359 but we're trapped within systems that are very oppressive, and 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.200 so it's a bummer to see like, oh, this cool 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.360 ship was used to do something horrible that I don't 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:29.560 agree with, but you got to remember that it's like 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:35.000 against that backdrop that none of us can really escape. Yeah, um, 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:39.080 I was. There's this amazing trans woman named Lynn Conway 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.080 who is super cool. She's still alive, and she is 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:44.640 used to work for IBM back in the fifties, and 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.440 she is like the person who developed the technology for 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:49.480 the cell phone, right, and like she was fired from 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.080 IBM for being trans and all this stuff, and reading 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:54.440 about her story, I was like, wow, I'm so inspired 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:56.919 by her, Like what a life. But then I continued 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:58.719 reading about her story and it's like, oh, she was 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:03.880 designing the pen for the government. Cool cool Google like, 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:06.640 But that doesn't mean I admire her and her bravery 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.920 and her you know, ability to like do cool ship 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.960 and persevere any less, even though I don't love the 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:16.120 fact that, you know, building defense for the government isn't 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.679 really my cup of tea, right, totally. No, that that 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:22.640 that nails it, And I think that's the similar story. Now. 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:24.640 I actually want to find out more about this this woman. 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.520 But um, a lot of the people that are going 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.240 to end up interwoven into this story have a very 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:33.720 you'll learn You'll learn this when you ever I'm talking 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.480 with Bridget, I end up like spending like four hours googling, 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:43.200 and like the best possible way. I'm gonna take that 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.760 as a compliment, absolutely, all right. So I want to 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:50.400 start by going way back in time, just because it's fun. 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:52.320 And the first thing that I want to make like 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.320 really clear to anyone um which I think everyone knows 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.240 this unless you swallowed a lot of really Eurocentric history, 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:00.880 which is that the first people doing complex were not 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:05.960 white people. The oldest undisputed mathematical documents are from Egypt 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:09.360 and Mesopotamia which is modern day Iraq, and there are 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.320 from the second century BC. The concept of zero was 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:15.679 imported into Europe from Africa. China was the first place 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:18.440 to make use of negative numbers. To be fair, as 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:20.520 far as I can tell, ancient Greece wasn't like terribly 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.520 far behind, but they, you know, got these ideas from 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.440 other places, and then the Celts picked some of it up. 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:30.559 But but overall, quote unquote Western knowledge is absolutely based 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:34.120 on Asian and African knowledge as far as anything I 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:36.959 can tell. And then the other thing in which I 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.720 guess I recovered in the introduction is to know is 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.080 that the first computers were people. So someone who computes, 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:47.000 someone who solves mathematical problems, which a lot of it 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.360 was about astronomy, a lot of it back in the day. 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:51.920 A lot of the first complex math that people were 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:54.760 doing was tracking the position of stars, which I like 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.559 because it ties neatly back into the story that we're 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:01.960 gonna be telling today. And the word computer itself dates 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:06.080 back to at least six from some really weird quote 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:07.520 that I could not figure how to parse, and I 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:09.320 like asked the Internet, and the Internet's like, we don't 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:11.840 know how to parse this either, some quote about the 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.400 mortality of man and how God or maybe Moses is 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:20.960 the computer who counts your days. Oh yeah, And everyone's like, 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:22.960 is this about God or Moses or something, or is 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:25.440 it just like some guy who's like counting all your 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:27.600 days who just like, I don't know, maybe a profit 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.280 or something. I'm not sure. Someone listening to this nose 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:32.800 and will be very upset that I didn't focus on 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:36.240 this particular aspect. But originally it was interchangeable with the 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:39.920 word mathematician, until eventually mathematicians started implying someone who was 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.240 doing the thinking about math and computer was involving someone 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.560 solving the math, which of course makes a hierarchy. And 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:49.920 when you figure out how to make a hierarchy, people 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:52.040 figure out how to shove humans onto it based on 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:56.800 existing systems of discrimination. So for a computer, they went 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:59.720 with one of the classics. Men do the thinking. Women 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.400 do the solving, which is obviously thinking also, but you know, 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:08.800 try explaining that to the patriarch. I love that people 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.000 were able to get away with saying that solving didn't 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:19.319 involve like complex thought evolved. Yeah, they're not doing the 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:21.480 higher level thinking about it. I'm like, I can't do 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:26.520 either of these things. So and it's actually something that 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:28.920 I've noticed in a lot of fields that I've worked in, 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:32.080 is that, for example, and publishing and a lot of 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.840 my work and publishing as a writer, it's a lot 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:37.559 of this is not universal and I'm not trying to 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:40.840 call out individual publishers, but there's a lot of women 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:44.240 doing the back end work and who are to publish men? Right, 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:46.360 A lot of the people who make books happen, who 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:48.600 are the editors, who are the type setters, who are 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.360 just doing all the work, not all the work. Writing 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:56.679 is work too, but I don't know it, and it 0:10:56.679 --> 0:11:00.360 it annoys me when I've noticed that publishers work for 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:03.240 it annoys me. Yeah, it is annoying, and I see it. 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:05.319 I agree with you, and I've seen it in so 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.119 many places. And I think that labor that we associate 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:11.680 with women, it's always going to be devalued. And so 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:14.880 even if it's the labor that like literally the thing 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:18.360 would not exist without this labor. It is the grease 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.400 that keeps the wheels running if it's associated with women 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.720 or somehow like perceived as feminine, and we just don't 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:27.319 value it, and that you can see that in I 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:31.880 mean everywhere, all all the all the way down. Yeah, no, absolutely, 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:34.800 But it took a while for for Western men to 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:36.880 actually figure out that they can make women do this work, 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:39.440 because they were like not convinced that women were smart 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.840 enough to do the solving or whatever. So so most 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.280 computers started off men as far as I can tell, 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.640 until about the second half of the nineteenth century, and 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:51.680 the first one I found, there's no part of me 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.040 that believes is the first woman computer, even under that name, 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:59.760 but the first white english woman Mary Edwards. Mary Edwards 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.880 was a white english woman born sometimes around seventeen fifty 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.160 and her husband, John Edwards, was a clergyman who couldn't 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:08.240 make ends meet, so in seventeen seventy three he got 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:11.959 himself hired by the British Nautical Almanac, among other people, 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:14.920 to do astronomical calculations for their almanac. And so he 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.559 became a computer, which is cool until you realize that 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:19.360 probably mostly what he did is make an almac that 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.320 was used by British sailors to go around and impress 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:25.319 people all over the world. But you know, um, the 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:27.000 people who can afford to pay people to do the 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:29.880 math there often up to no good. So John Edwards 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.280 he's getting paid as a computer, but he's not a computer. 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:34.800 His wife as a computer. His wife is doing all 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:37.520 of the computing work. It's possible that he was doing 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:38.840 some of it. I'm not sure, but I believe she 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.960 was doing the majority or all of it. And I 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:44.720 actually kind of wonder how many times throughout history this happens, 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:47.720 where some man just literally gets the credit in the 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:50.920 pay and and sometimes maybe in a mean way, being 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:52.559 like ha ha, I'm going to take all the credit. 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:55.160 And maybe sometimes it's like a woman is like, all right, well, 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:57.000 I can't get any ship done unless I marry this 0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:59.000 dude and get him to take the credit. You know, 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.920 So he dies in God only knows what he dies from, 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.880 probably just from being alive in the eighteenth century, which 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:10.839 killed a lot of people young. And when he died, 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:13.840 she wrote the Nautical Board a letter and was like, hey, 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.480 it was actually me the entire time. Can I can 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:21.040 I keep having this job? I like having this job? 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:24.080 And they said yes, and she became one of the 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:27.960 their thirty five computers and the first woman to work 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:31.840 under the job title computer, at least in English. Probably 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:33.920 a bad sign that I was like, oh wow, Luke 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:39.000 said yes, I know, right, really bad, very progressive of 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.440 But the sad part is it probably was there was 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:47.840 probably that's a woman taking credit for her labor and 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:51.240 like being able to continue to do it. Who would 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.520 have thought. There's probably like an entire movies worth of 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:57.760 drama that happened around that decision. You know, there's probably 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:00.120 like one of the guys was like, I think we 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:02.320 should let her do it, and then he like loses 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.400 his job, but then like the head of it all, 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:07.680 his wife is like, I won't suck you until you 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.320 let him come back, you know whatever. Starring Meryl Streep. 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.959 Obviously I would watch that and one of the things 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:17.520 that was kind of interesting, right You're like, oh, wow, 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:19.120 she's and then you're like, oh, she's one of thirty 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:20.840 five people doing this work, and this is something that 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:22.120 seems to get left out and a lot of the 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.600 stuff that talks about this is it's less about individual genius, 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:27.640 although it is about individual genius, but it's about the 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.760 collective genius of people getting together and you know, they're 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.160 checking and rechecking each other's work, and they even end 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.200 up like splitting problems to work on them as if 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:40.040 basically parallel processing all of the mathematical problems, which I 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:44.680 think is cool. So her daughter, Eliza Edwards takes up 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:47.600 the family business when her mom died, and then she 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:50.320 had that job until they centralized the job until London 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:52.920 and since she didn't live in London. Uh oh, and 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:55.080 then England also passed a bunch of laws making harder 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.920 for women to find work because progress isn't linear and 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.960 sometimes people have it better and worse and things get 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:04.120 better and then they get worse, which I don't like 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:09.200 reminding myself right now. Hopeful. Yeah, pretty grim reminder, especially 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:15.240 at today these days. Yeah. Uh well, gay marriage was nice, 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:17.760 while no, I'm kidding, we're gonna hold onto it all right. 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:22.040 So the first American woman computer I run across is 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:24.600 a woman named Maria Mitchell who's also a white woman, 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.560 and she was born in Nantucket in eighteen eighteen and 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:29.280 she had the good fortune to be born into a 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:31.400 Quaker family. And usually say the good fortune and kind 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:33.760 of a sarcastic way, but this time I'm not being sarcastic. 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.040 Quakers come up disproportionately on this podcast, or at least 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:39.040 in my research, because they're one of the only groups 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.480 of white people are actually they weren't actually exclusively white, 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:45.360 but majority white people in the United States who actually 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.000 consistently risked their lives to stop slavery, and relevant to 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:51.680 today's story, they raised their daughters with the same education 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:55.040 and opportunities as they raised their sons. So like, Quakers 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:57.760 keep doing cool stuff in history way more than I 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:02.120 very disproportionately. Yeah, I funk with Quakers. I've been to 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:04.680 Quaker church and it's like cool. Like I'm not religious, 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:08.080 but like a Quaker church, their ceremonies are very cool. 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.560 Like sometimes you sit in silence sometimes and whatever comes 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:13.280 to you, you can speak to the group. It's like 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:16.440 a very I keep keep being cool Quakers. I like, 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:19.560 I like what you're doing. Yeah, no, that's cool. So 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:22.880 Maria she grows up into an educated, maybe middle class family. 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.440 Her her mom is a library worker and her father 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:29.280 is a school teacher who's into amateur astronomy. Apparents like 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.280 ten fucking kids, and they still found the time to 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:36.360 teach her all kinds of weird astronomical devices and math ship. 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:39.240 When she was twelve, she helped her dad calculate the 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.200 solar eclipse, and then she grew up to be even cooler. 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:44.560 When she was seventeen, she founded a school for girls, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:46.920 and the first girls that she took in were three 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:51.080 quote Portuguese girls, which was slang for immigrant women of color, 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:56.480 regardless of what nationality. And since schools weren't integrated, basically, 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.160 by by teaching these three girls, she knew that like 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:00.840 the rich white women and we're going to send their 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:04.120 kids to her school. And she did it anyway or whatever, 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:05.960 just like one of these like wow, you passed this 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.159 like bare minimum bar, you know, like I don't know, 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:13.439 I mean it's like, I mean, get back then. It 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.160 probably was like a very like a very cool radical 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.800 thing to do. Yeah, no, totally. But the downside is 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:23.960 that since she's seventeen when she starts this school, she's 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.119 a teenager, and so she pretty quickly gets bored I 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:32.280 think of teaching. Uh so I don't know, when she's eighteen, 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.439 she gets offered a librarian ship at the Nantucket Athenium. 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:37.680 And I've never heard of an athenium. Have you heard 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:39.600 of an athenium? I don't even know if they still exist. 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:42.199 I've never heard of it. My spell check knows what 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:43.600 they are, so I think it must be a thing. 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:48.560 But it was this cultural center slash learning center slash 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.280 library hybrid thing that they had going on at least 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:53.879 in n Tuckett. It seems really cool, and so she 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.320 shakes this job I think maybe closes her school. I 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.760 don't know. I hopefully someone else took it on. And 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:04.200 so she now starts working at the Atheneum. When five 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.040 years later, when she's twenty three, there's this twenty three 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.560 year old who had just escaped slavery a couple of 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:11.640 years earlier who shows up to give his very first 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:16.080 public address at anti slavery conference at the Nantucket Antheneum. 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.760 And the guy's name is Frederick Douglas. And so he 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:23.800 gives his very first public address about the need for 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.119 abolition and all that ship at this thing, and everyone 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.560 gets really excited about him because he's fucking awesome. Can 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.600 you imagine here, like like I know he was known 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:35.040 as an orator, Like can you imagine being in the crowd, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.040 probably like being like, oh yeah, I was there for 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:44.200 Nirvana's Unplugged totally, totally because this is the very first one, 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:45.560 and the stuff I was reading about it was like 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:47.200 he was really nervous. He was like, I don't know 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:48.960 if these people are gonna like me. And then like 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:52.040 everyone's just like, he like steals the show. He's just 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:54.560 like an opening speaker or whatever, and everyone's just just like, no, 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.040 this guy, this guy rules. And so she's she stays 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:01.000 friends with him, and they reign friends the rest of 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.920 their lives. And I know this is not actually synchronicity 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:07.879 or it's probably coincidence, but he called his newspaper the 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:10.840 north Star, and I just anything that's astronomical, I'm going 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:18.400 to shove into this story. And it's like shameless, yeah 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.760 for you, Yeah, y'all hired a science fiction writer to 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:27.280 tell a history podcast. I'm not gonna lie, but I'm 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:29.560 going to look for anything I can't that fits. I 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:33.399 wouldn't want you to be any other way, Margaret. And 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.000 so this is something that I actually am trying to 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:38.040 learn more about right now. And I don't totally know 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.120 how I feel, because I I've known for a long 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.120 time that the suffragette movement and a lot of early 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.359 feminism and in the US and UK was racists, and 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:47.560 there was a lot of like, we want the vote 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:49.440 for white women and we don't give a shit about 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:53.760 anyone else. But when I'm looking through the nineteenth century abolitionists, 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.520 I keep coming across all of these places where they 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:02.440 intertwined with early feminism, and and Maria Mitchell is one 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:04.639 of these people, and it is part of the abolitionist movement, 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:07.920 and it seems like there must have been like a 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.280 a bad split, or maybe I'm just like spoiled and 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.199 only reading the people who I come across, you know, 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.199 I don't know, Yeah, I mean, I think it's one 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:18.879 of those things where I see this a lot where 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:24.199 people who are historically like marginalized, there's this idea that 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.000 we need to be working against one another, and the 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:29.600 times where you work alongside each other, it's like you 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.159 really see so clearly that we're strong, our movements are 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:35.960 stronger together, that unity is so much more powerful than division, 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.080 like the times where there's that, you know, alignment. I 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.760 think in history has always been so powerful. Yeah, no, totally, 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.760 and it's when she gets done, you know. Like so 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.280 she was part of this movement, this abolitionist movement called 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.440 the free product produce movement, which was a slave labor 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:56.240 boycott movement that was originally started shocker by Quakers. Um, 0:20:56.280 --> 0:21:00.119 and I think both white and black Quakers, but even 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.840 when I'm talking about abolitionists, it's annoyingly hard to find 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:06.160