Human Calculators
Today, we take the calculators for granted. We have them on our phones and we use them when we need to calculate something without giving it a second thought. Kids even feel as if learning math in school is unnecessary, since we always have a calculator in our pockets. However, before we had actual calculators, people were employed to serve as “human calculators.”
These human calculators, also known as human computers, were usually women who were asked to crunch numbers and make calculations. In order to check the correctness of the calculations – which were often complicated – different groups would work simultaneously on the same calculations.