The Harvard Computers (10 Mar 2004)

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The Harvard Computers (10 Mar 2004)
A century ago, it was rare for women to be employed in astronomy. But when a new photographic technique was applied to telescopes, suddenly a large workforce was needed to analyse hundreds of thousands of stars in the night sky

Men were too expensive, so Harvard College Observatory recruited a group of lowly-paid female 'computers' to do the work. Little did anyone realise that the women's diligence would lead to key discoveries about the stars and our place in the universe.

Article URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/whatson/prog_parse.cgi?FILENAME=20040310/20040310_2100_49700_22185_30

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