Scanning one of the e-zines zdnet.com I read regularly, something caught my eye, “Golden anniversary–U.S. enters space race.” Fifty years? Yea, I guess it has been that long. Hard to picture now, but there was genuine panic in the country about the space race. We had only defeated Hitler a little more than a dozen years before and it took basically us and the rest of the world to do it. At that time we were just one of a bunch of powerful nations. The idea of “Super Powers” was yet to be invented and our place in the list of powerful nations was far from certain. The Russians were already up there, in space that is, twice. As a grade schooler I watched through a neighbor’s telescope as a small dot moved across the stars. The Russians had put that object up there. Very disquieting.

One photo in this story caught my eye. Its a picture of the “computers” who were instrumental in the success of the launch of Explorer 1. That’s right, “who were instrumental, not “that were instrumental.” It’s a group photo of the all woman team who did the math that plotted the trajectories of the spacecraft; their job title? “Computer”.

Read the full story and see some interesting photos.