The book Hidden Figures, which was made into a critically acclaimed movie, tells of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia.^[1] Housed at NACA, the precursor to NASA, Langley was where production and experimental aircraft were developed and tested, especially during and after World Word War II. Langley helped develop the first supersonic aircraft in the U.S. Langley also participated significantly in the development and testing of the first U.S. spacecraft.

All of this work required extremely high levels of mathematics. Data from tests had to be processed by hand–much of this was before the advent of modern computers. Thus human computers or mathematicians were hired by the hundreds. They spent their days crunching all the data gathered in the lab’s wind tunnels and other tests. As the space race ensued, these human computers calculated the trajectories of the Mercury and Apollo missions as well.Heart of the Matter: How Not to Be Shallow (1 Sam. 16:6-7) Chris Altrock – July 2, 2017