They became known as the 'West Computers.' Despite having the same education, they had to retake college courses they had already passed and were often never considered for promotions or other jobs within NACA. While they did the same work as their white counterparts, African-American computers were paid less and relegated to the segregated west section of the Langley campus, where they had to use separate dining and bathroom facilities. Get more great stories in the PopMech newsletter into the throes of war, NACA and Langley began recruiting African-American women with college degrees to work as human computers. Six months later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. First he issued Executive Order 8802, which banned 'discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin' (though it does not include gender). In June 1941, with war raging in Europe, President Franklin Roosevelt looked to ensure the growth of the federal workforce. and they didn't have to pay them very much,' NASA's historian Bill Barry says, explaining the NACA's decision. In 1935, the NACA ( National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a precursor to NASA) hired five women to be their first computer pool at the Langley campus. While working six-day weeks at a job demanding 'a large capacity for tedium,' they were still expected to uphold societal norms of being a good wife and mother. Williamina Fleming, for instance, classified over 10,000 stars using a scheme she created and was the first to recognize the existence of white dwarfs.

As chronicled in Dava Sobel's book The Glass Universe, these women were every bit as capable as men despite toiling under less-than-favorable conditions. In the late 19th century, the Harvard College Observatory employed a group of women who collected, studied, and cataloged thousands of images of stars on glass plates. Women working as so-called 'human computers' dates back decades before space exploration.

Hidden figures novel