Your GPS -- and mine -- function because of the work of a 93-year-old, grandmotherly mathematician, who still prefers paper maps for her own use.
Gladys West spent most of her career well behind the scenes at the Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, doing obscure math about planetary orbits and the shape of the Earth. That second item is critical information if, say, you need to hit Moscow with an ICBM, or fly a plane from Sacramento to London. (To get me from home to an unfamiliar branch library, a lower level of precision will do -- but only if cumulative mapping errors haven't thrown the whole thing off. So we need Ms. West's work again.)
She is one of the people who built the future, and I'll be you hadn't heard of her before today, either.
Thanks, had not seen that part of the GPS story.
ReplyDeleteI have been to Dahlgren back in the days when I was working on how to hit unnamed places with Not-An-ICBM (apparently at the same time she was working there, but that wasn't one of the areas I was involved with). Neat place.
That's a neat new bit of info! I put in 4 years and Dahlgren, and this is the first I've heard of it- I didn't work on those sorts of problems, but I clearly remember examples of this work being shown off, and how important the work was for missile programs. Hedey Lamarr is usually our Navy civilian to whom we nod our heads, and we'll have to include Gladys as well!
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