Chapter 14 Progress
1. Explain what the next step involved after WWII, as Jet engines replaced propellers and supersonic flight led to still-faster hypersonic flight. What were engineers looking to do next?
2. What did Dorothy Vaughan know was going to happen when the "electronic calculator" was purchased from Bell Telephone Laboratories? (111)
3. As flight became more complicated, calculating supersonic flights became a matter of 35 variables in one algebraic equation. How was the work of the human computer different from the new electronic calculators? Think time, space, money, materials and development. (110-113)
4. How did Dorothy Vaughan plan to create job security in the shadow of the new electronic calculators? (113)
5. How did the fear of communism impact schools in America? Think about U.S. children and competition with the children of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. (114-115)
6. If Mary Jackson were the janitor, she could do something she couldn't do as a professional engineer-in-training at Hampton High School. Explain. (117)
7. Explain what it means to be "sabotaged"? (119)
8. At the end of this chapter, the role of the Cold War is explained. Mistrust and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union were shaping the goals of the political and scientific community. Explain in very simple terms what America was trying to do before the Soviet Union could accomplish this one advancement. (120-121)
Dorothy Vaughan was an American computer programmer and mathematician who made significant contributions to the early U.S. space program. She was also the first Black American supervisor at NASA, a role she would continue to hold up to and beyond its merger with NASA.
Mary Jackson first female African-American engineer at Langley
Thomas Byrdsong, Langley engineer and Mary Jackson's dear friend, inside one of the wind tunnels