Image:Human_computers_-_Dryden.jpg Before mechanical and electronic computers, the term "computer", in use from the mid 17th_century, meant a human undertaking mathematical Calculations. Teams of people or '''human computers''' were used to undertake long and often tedious calculations. The work was divided so that this could be undertaken in parallel. The approach was taken for astronomical and other tedious complex calculations. Perhaps the first example of organized human computing was by the Frenchman Alexis_Claude_Clairaut (1713–1765), when he divided the computation to determine timing of the return of Halley's_Comet with two colleagues, Joseph-Jérôme_Le_Lepart and Nicole-Reine_Étable. The Indian mathematician Radhanath_Sikdar was employed as a "computer" for the Great_Trigonometric_Survey of India in 1840. It was he who first identified and calculated the height of the world's highest mountain later called Mount_Everest. Human computers played integral roles in the World_War_II War_effort in the United_States, and because of the depletion of the male labor force due to the draft, many computers during WWII were women, frequently with degrees in Mathematics. In the Manhattan_Project, human computers, working with a variety of mechanical aids, assisted numerical studies of the complex formulae related to Atomic_fusion. And because the six people responsible for setting up problems on the ENIAC, the premiere general-purpose electronic digital computer built at the University_of_Pennsylvania during WWII, were drafted from a corps of human computers, the world's first professional computer programmers were women, paving the way for careers in Data_processing as socially acceptable for women in an era of Gender_roles. (These six computers-turned-computer-programmers were Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas.) Following World_War_II, the NACA used human computers in flight research to transcribe raw data from celluloid film and Oscillograph paper and then, using Slide_rules and electric Calculators, reduce it to standard engineering units. The term has also been applied to individuals with prodigious powers of Mental_arithmetic, also known as Mental_calculators. == References == * Grier, David Alan, ''The Human Computer and the Birth of the Information Age'', Joseph Henry Lecture, Philosophical_Society_of_Washington, May 11, 2001. * Grier, David Alan, ''When Computers Were Human'', Princeton_University_Press, 2005. ISBN 0-691-09157-9. == External links == * Early NACA human computers at work, photograph, October 1949. * The Age of Female Computers, by David Skinner {{compu-stub}} {{history-stub}} Category:History_of_computing Category:Classes_of_computers Category:Defunct_occupations