Harvard Computers

The Harvard Computers were a team of women working as skilled workers to process astronomical data at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The team was directed by Edward Charles Pickering (1877 to 1919) and, following his death in 1919, by Annie Jump Cannon. Other computers in the team included Williamina Fleming and Florence Cushman. Although these women started primarily as calculators, they made significant contributions to astronomy, much of which they published in research articles. History Although Pickering believed that gathering data at astronomical observatories was not the most appropriate work, it seems that several factors contributed to his decision to hire women instead of men. Among them was that men were paid much more than women, so he could employ more staff with the same budget. This was relevant in a time when the amount of astronomical data was surpassing the capacity of the Observatories to process it. Although some of Pickering's female staff were astronomy graduates, their wages were similar to those of unskilled workers. They usually earned between 25 and 50 cents per hour (between $ and $ in ), more than a factory worker but less than a clerical one. In describing the dedication and efficiency with which the Harvard Computers, including Florence, undertook this effort, Edward Pickering said, "a loss of one minute in the reduction of each estimate would delay the publication of the entire work by the equivalent of the time of one assistant for two years." The women were often tasked with measuring the brightness, position, and color of stars. The work included such tasks as classifying stars by comparing the photographs to known catalogs and reducing the photographs while accounting for things like atmospheric refraction in order to render the clearest possible image. Fleming herself described the work as "so nearly alike that there will be little to describe outside ordinary routine work of measurement, examination of photographs, and of work involved in the reduction of these observations". At times women offered to work at the observatory for free in order to gain experience in a field that was difficult to get into.