For what it's worth, this narrative has been floating around for a minute, and conveniently ignores _how_ she became a junior programmer. Go look it up :) suddenly "brought on as a jr" becomes less an indictment of her skills, and more an indictment of NASA management undervaluing a woman.
FWiW I did a pure applied mathematics degree + half an actual engineering course (it got too easy so I transfered to math as they were letting students work directly on control systems for robots rather than rote bookwork).
Four years after graduation, with four years coding experience on things both numerical and symbolic I transferred into a geophysics position developing software for signal aquistion (from sat, sea, air, and ground units), processing, projection, interpretation (this was before Keyhole + google maps | google earth so the group was also writing their own world scale mapping software (late 80s | early 90s)).
Long story short, I had similar experience levels to Hamiliton at that time and I was very definitely a Jr on the team as everybody else had way more eperience than I did.
It's frustrating how often this happens. Exaggerating someone's achievements isn't helpful, it's undermining them and others like them, as now people will rationally be more sceptical of similar claims
The story of Ada Lovelace seems to get more fantastic every time I hear it. Even Turing himself, who has no shortage of actual achievements, has his role in the Enigma cracking overstated at the expense of other cryptanalysts, especially those from other countries
I only recently read about the contribution of Polish mathematicians in breaking Enigma. Fairly sure that wasn't mentioned when I visited Bletchley Park Museum as a kid.
Ada Lovelace might not have been the "first programmer", but she was at least talented, a visionary, and an interesting character.
An ironic thing about the Lovelace story is that while the popular impression of her is quite twisted, the real story is just as interesting. Stephen Wolfram wrote a nice article a while back, after he spent effort to consult primary sources to try to grasp the reality behind the myth.
As for the Poles who were actually the first to crack the Enigma code, they aren't alone among Polish mathematicians being ignored in the West. My top example of a Polish mathematician who unjustly lacks fame would be Helena Rasiowa.
It seems that no one has so much as questioned the narrative on Wikipedia. And the only source we have questioning it is a nitter/twitter thread (above). Which is not saying that the questioner is wrong per-se, -it could be a niche of a niche thing-, but eh.
I'm not sure why you're claiming familiarity with the author when you haven't even read the thread. She was the lead in 1969 when they landed on the moon, however she was promoted by her soon-to-be husband after the vast majority of the software had already been written.
I think the comment was referring to you saying "yeah no" to a thread subject that is "Margaret Hamilton Led the NASA Software Team That Landed Astronauts on the Moon".
It is funny that your answer seems to blame or mock the commenter for not being hyper precise with their words and yet you also were not.
(for example, you could answer me something like "well, the 'yeah no' did not refer to the title, that's just one interpretation" and blame me for not having accounted for that, while you yourself did not account at all that the previous comment can just refer to your "yeah no" juxtaposed to the title)
Apollo 8 was unmanned and hardly the final version of the flight software.
Hamilton was hired early, was a software director by 1965 and her and a team iterated development through the first crewed flights in 1968 until the end of the program in 1972.
From Wikipedia: "Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. These three astronauts — Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders — were the first humans to witness and photograph the far side of the Moon and an Earthrise."
Apollo 8 was an error on my part - I pulled that from the "yeah, no" link - the key part is that Hamilton started on unmanned mission before the first crewed mission.
Firstly, Apollo 8 was certainly manned, it just didn't land on the lunar surface.
Secondly, she was not a software director in 1965. In her own words:
> MARGARET HAMILTON: When I first got involved in Apollo, I was coming off the SAGE project for the Lincoln Labs. I was a young kid, and I was hired by Dan Lickly over here (pointing to Dan). And I was assigned, this was during the unmanned missions, and I was hired to do what they called programming, they also call it software engineering today, but not back then.
> One of my first assignments was to work on algorithms having to do with lunar landmark tables. So I wrote programs having to do with that area. Then there was an unmanned mission that was taking off, and people came running in to tell me that the lunar landmark tables were in upside down and backwards. This was just when the mission had just taken off. And I believed, until it landed, and heard on the news everything was okay, that I was in real trouble because I was involved with these algorithms.
> Then, because I was still a beginner, I was assigned responsibility for what was thought to be the least important software to be developed for the next mission. I was the most of the beginners; I mean, I was the first junior person, on this next unmanned mission
The unmanned flights she refers to would have been Apollo 4/5/6 test flights, so 1967/1968. Apollo software development started in 1961, she was still green in 1967. What exactly was she leading in 1965?
It was the first crewed Apollo mission (and a dry run that caught fire and killed the crew on the launch pad).
The Apollo program (aka Project Apollo) ran from 1961–1972 (oddly they didn't launch a crewed flight on the first day - go figure).
> and in her own words
(from my link | your link)
this was during the unmanned missions,
ie. started before the Apollo 1 explosion in 1967.
Wikipedia has her work on SAGE ending in 1963, the Smithsoniam has her appointed director in 1965:
Thanks to the success of her work at SAGE, she was the first programmer hired for the Apollo project at MIT. In 1965, she became head of her own team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (later known as Draper Laboratory), which was dedicated to writing and testing software for Apollo 11’s two 70-pound computers—one aboard the command module, Columbia, and one aboard the lunar module, Eagle.
I admit I fluffed something with the Apollo comment - I was reading multiple sources at the time and I guess I pulled that from the parent "yeah, no" link which was riddled with issues.
Hamilton's SAGE work ended 1963, Smithsonian asserts she started and later was promoted in 1965.
Your claim is that the Smithsoniam got this wrong?
Also: Had Hamilton been a rocket engineer and mentioned her work on engines for the unmanned flights .. that would easily place her work at or before 1963 .. long before the actual launch of the unmanned flights.
Mentioning her working of software for unmanned flights is more or less the same - this was the first time such software had been written and it took years to plan and get together - well before the actual date of use.
By her own words, yes. I think the Smithsonian and Wikipedia are stuck in a game of telephone. Working on "the least important software" during the unmanned Apollo missions, but also already leading her own team by 1965 are clearly incompatible.
She also references lunar landmark tables, which wouldn't have been relevant until missions that started in '67-68, so she's not talking about earlier unmanned suborbital tests e.g. AS-201.
I can't find any primary source suggesting she worked there before then - her name doesn't start appearing in document dumps until January 1968, e.g.: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/links2.html
Maybe that's indicative of when she got promoted, but given that she painted herself as a complete newbie around the same time period, that's quite the career trajectory.
from 1976 is likely as good as it gets without really diving deep.
It doesn't have hard dates on when software development started (but likely coincided with the early engine tests in the early 1960s)
It begins:
The very early programs for the first few unmanned earth orbital test flights were each put together by a small dedicated group led by a chief engineer-programmer.
It then discusses many software components of getting a rocket from the earth to the moon and back again and the various people that did the over arching thrust of each software component.
It then moves on to say:
Much of the detailed code of these programs was written by a team of specialists led by Margaret Hamilton.
The task assignments to these individuals included, in addition to writing the code, the testing to certify that the program element met requirements.
Overall testing of the assembled collection of program elements necessarily took the use of considerable human and machine resources.
So it's a big team effort (no surprise) taking many years, with key players for each component and a seperate group tying all the pieces together and bringing them to standard, to mesh well, and ironing out the hard stuff (fine details).
It may or may not go very far though. I've had a look at a bunch of other posts by AnechoicMedia_ via nitter. They seem to have a bit of a bias, which makes me doubt their writing up front. But it might be worth picking apart?
32 comments
[ 313 ms ] story [ 2239 ms ] threadWith that background why would hiring Hamilton as a junior at the Draper Laboratory be an indictment of NASA managaement?
FWiW I did a pure applied mathematics degree + half an actual engineering course (it got too easy so I transfered to math as they were letting students work directly on control systems for robots rather than rote bookwork).
Four years after graduation, with four years coding experience on things both numerical and symbolic I transferred into a geophysics position developing software for signal aquistion (from sat, sea, air, and ground units), processing, projection, interpretation (this was before Keyhole + google maps | google earth so the group was also writing their own world scale mapping software (late 80s | early 90s)).
Long story short, I had similar experience levels to Hamiliton at that time and I was very definitely a Jr on the team as everybody else had way more eperience than I did.
I guess such things are relative.
Also, why would you assume "sexual relations"? That's just crass.
The story of Ada Lovelace seems to get more fantastic every time I hear it. Even Turing himself, who has no shortage of actual achievements, has his role in the Enigma cracking overstated at the expense of other cryptanalysts, especially those from other countries
Ada Lovelace might not have been the "first programmer", but she was at least talented, a visionary, and an interesting character.
As for the Poles who were actually the first to crack the Enigma code, they aren't alone among Polish mathematicians being ignored in the West. My top example of a Polish mathematician who unjustly lacks fame would be Helena Rasiowa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Margaret_Hamilton_(softwa...
(or in the archive at)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Margaret_Hamilton_(softwa...
It seems that no one has so much as questioned the narrative on Wikipedia. And the only source we have questioning it is a nitter/twitter thread (above). Which is not saying that the questioner is wrong per-se, -it could be a niche of a niche thing-, but eh.
https://nitter.net/AnechoicMedia_/status/1629315139169075200
Do you have a more neutral source that Hamilton didn't lead the team when the moon landing happened?
It is funny that your answer seems to blame or mock the commenter for not being hyper precise with their words and yet you also were not.
(for example, you could answer me something like "well, the 'yeah no' did not refer to the title, that's just one interpretation" and blame me for not having accounted for that, while you yourself did not account at all that the previous comment can just refer to your "yeah no" juxtaposed to the title)
Hamilton was hired early, was a software director by 1965 and her and a team iterated development through the first crewed flights in 1968 until the end of the program in 1972.
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_en...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
No, it wasn't.
From Wikipedia: "Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing, and then departed safely back to Earth. These three astronauts — Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders — were the first humans to witness and photograph the far side of the Moon and an Earthrise."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8
Apollo 8 was an error on my part - I pulled that from the "yeah, no" link - the key part is that Hamilton started on unmanned mission before the first crewed mission.
Secondly, she was not a software director in 1965. In her own words:
> MARGARET HAMILTON: When I first got involved in Apollo, I was coming off the SAGE project for the Lincoln Labs. I was a young kid, and I was hired by Dan Lickly over here (pointing to Dan). And I was assigned, this was during the unmanned missions, and I was hired to do what they called programming, they also call it software engineering today, but not back then.
> One of my first assignments was to work on algorithms having to do with lunar landmark tables. So I wrote programs having to do with that area. Then there was an unmanned mission that was taking off, and people came running in to tell me that the lunar landmark tables were in upside down and backwards. This was just when the mission had just taken off. And I believed, until it landed, and heard on the news everything was okay, that I was in real trouble because I was involved with these algorithms.
> Then, because I was still a beginner, I was assigned responsibility for what was thought to be the least important software to be developed for the next mission. I was the most of the beginners; I mean, I was the first junior person, on this next unmanned mission
https://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/...
The unmanned flights she refers to would have been Apollo 4/5/6 test flights, so 1967/1968. Apollo software development started in 1961, she was still green in 1967. What exactly was she leading in 1965?
It was the first crewed Apollo mission (and a dry run that caught fire and killed the crew on the launch pad).
The Apollo program (aka Project Apollo) ran from 1961–1972 (oddly they didn't launch a crewed flight on the first day - go figure).
> and in her own words
(from my link | your link)
ie. started before the Apollo 1 explosion in 1967.Wikipedia has her work on SAGE ending in 1963, the Smithsoniam has her appointed director in 1965:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/marga...I admit I fluffed something with the Apollo comment - I was reading multiple sources at the time and I guess I pulled that from the parent "yeah, no" link which was riddled with issues.
Your claim is that the Smithsoniam got this wrong?
Also: Had Hamilton been a rocket engineer and mentioned her work on engines for the unmanned flights .. that would easily place her work at or before 1963 .. long before the actual launch of the unmanned flights.
Mentioning her working of software for unmanned flights is more or less the same - this was the first time such software had been written and it took years to plan and get together - well before the actual date of use.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/60-years-ago-first-test-firing-...
She also references lunar landmark tables, which wouldn't have been relevant until missions that started in '67-68, so she's not talking about earlier unmanned suborbital tests e.g. AS-201.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS-201
I can't find any primary source suggesting she worked there before then - her name doesn't start appearing in document dumps until January 1968, e.g.: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/links2.html
Maybe that's indicative of when she got promoted, but given that she painted herself as a complete newbie around the same time period, that's quite the career trajectory.
http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf
from 1976 is likely as good as it gets without really diving deep.
It doesn't have hard dates on when software development started (but likely coincided with the early engine tests in the early 1960s)
It begins:
It then discusses many software components of getting a rocket from the earth to the moon and back again and the various people that did the over arching thrust of each software component.It then moves on to say:
So it's a big team effort (no surprise) taking many years, with key players for each component and a seperate group tying all the pieces together and bringing them to standard, to mesh well, and ironing out the hard stuff (fine details).It may or may not go very far though. I've had a look at a bunch of other posts by AnechoicMedia_ via nitter. They seem to have a bit of a bias, which makes me doubt their writing up front. But it might be worth picking apart?