Long ago, before there were PCs, before mainframes, before electrified buildings: there were women with notepads.
The word "computer" dates back to the year 1613. In those days, academic researchers who needed the extra help to work out equations would hire students or clerks to help with the majority of the grunt work in order to get calculations usable in a reasonable timeframe. After a couple centuries and an industrial revolution, computers began to move out of study rooms and into government offices, laboratories, and private businesses.
In the 1760s, computers began to be organized into teams in order to perform astronomical calculations. During this period, some of the first mathematical tables were created (yes, like the ones in your textbooks). By the 1780s these techniques were being used to make nautical almanacs for calculating longitude at sea. Successive groups of computers built catalogs of tables and pre-calculated data to make the work go faster. By 1865, teams were growing relatively large, and so — rather than hiring future mathematicians — the scientists heading these departments began to hire women en masse. From this era onward, most researchers built their work on the hands and minds of computers, only rarely allowing the most skilled to advance to become researchers themselves.
The industrialization of computing led to an explosion of use cases for data. Statistics became cheaper and more commonplace, handling and examination of samples could be done simultaneously in parallel, and in the 1870s it was even possible to calculate weather simulations. By the 1910s, fluid dynamics had become so advanced that humans were calculating the stresses on dams (including the Afsluitdijk, which converted the Zuiderzee inlet into Lake Ijssel in the Netherlands).
Around the same time period, large numbers of computers were used to product maps, navigation tables, and artillery tables in World War I. The US Government continued to utilize computers for decades, notably in the Mathematical Tables Project which standardized, modernized, and increased the accuracy of calculations for radio navigation, radar, shockwave propagation, and high-level mathematical functions.
By the 1940s, the work began to be augmented by electronic calculators, when previously computers relied on mechanical calculators and slide rules. Human computers did calculations on nuclear fission for the Manhattan Project, and performed some of the first analyses of flight data for NASA. The first American crewed orbit (sorry Yuri) was made possible through the work of women of color like Dorothy Vaughan. And this achievement is the subject of Margot Lee Shetterly's Significant Figures.
With the development of the ENIAC mainframe, the era of the Human computer began to come to a close. Due to labor shortages during WWII, the first computer programmers: Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas were computers themselves. As programming languages didn't exist yet, the blueprints of the mainframe had to be studied in order to understand which switches would lead to which outcome. From here on, the word "computer" came to mean less about the work of human hands and minds, but instead became the realm of switches, cables, and punchcards. The ENIAC ushered in the era of programmers.
FUN FACT: The first ever computer "bug" was a literal moth found in the Harvard Mk II.
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New Megathread came early, Neeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds. :party-rocking:
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awaits Yu-Gi-Oh monologue about wtf is about to happen :surprised-pika:
Well you see, Ulysses, when I play the reverse Uno it sends your No U back to yourself, thus you are caught in an infinite loop of No Us that prevent you from taking a turn until the match is disqualified. And as a finishing touch, it's a trans Uno card which means your speech will be UwUified. Enjoy what time you have left outside the shadow realm!
Finally tested negative for covid after like 10 days of having it :covid-cool:
Time to get back to coughing in strangers' mouths
First time taking a covid test while truly feeling like shit, pray for me hex girls 😔
The funny thing is that I'm pretty sure Putin would like Russia to look more like the Russian Empire than the Soviet Union.
So a trans model from the city just came down here to meet with family. All the indigenous kids keep running out to see the "beautiful man-woman." I feel kind of bad for all the stares she keeps getting but it's more out of curiosity than anything else. Trans people in this part of the country aren't really controversial and are generally treated more like abnormalities. There's strangely more tolerance for them than homosexuals.
basically the same attitude as that headline about the GI becoming a bombshell or whatever
Sort of. The indigenous population here is unique in that they're the only group completely separate from the Mayans and possibly predate them. Their view of trans people is more out of pity because they're seen as "caged souls" who are cursed to be living in a body they can't reproduce from. They're more nomadic and reproduction is big with them.
A lot of the curiosity around the model is that she completely passes and gender reassignment surgery is something those kids have never seen or heard of. I think that's why they keep poking her to see if she'll literally transform into a man and then a woman again.
The non-indigenous people probably do have the view of the headline you mentioned because they have a warped view of trans women.
I think that's one of the rare cases I'd find it endearing, not to speak for others.
cops knocked at my door the other night for a missing person in the neighborhood and every crime i had ever committed flashed before my eyes
not only should there be kink at pride, there should be kink in this ventriloquism convention
Just wanted to listen to norm Macdonald's last standup and am hit with anti trans bullshit. Just tell the moth story norm why have you done this
Should have guessed this shit would happen when Chapelle was announced as reacting to the special
I ain't a rabid anti ukraine person but if /r/ukraine could go any amount of time without upvoting a picture of a person that also contains "1488" that would be cool
:isaac-pog: Just found out Sonic 06 :no-copyright: has a hard mode, truly this game just keeps on giving :party-blob:
Imagining a failed and highly controversial marketing campaign by mid 2000s Nokia where they claim to be “clearing Cambodia of landlines” by handing out free phones
ive decided quasi stealth sucks and im just gonna out myself when relevant probably