🎧 353: In The Analytical Engine ...

In The Analytical Engine, Jeremy Bernstein outlines the project that Lorna described to Herb and Ella:

In 1943, the Moore School and the Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, were conducting a joint project involving the computation of artillery firing tables for the Army. The Moore School contingent . . . used a Bush analog computer and employed a hundred women to do hand computations as a necessary adjunct to the machine operations . . . .

     “You’d have to go to Maryland?” asked Ella.
     “Yes,” said Lorna, “I would. Come here, Ella.” She patted the sofa beside her. Ella sat by her side and said nothing. Ella and Lorna had never been apart for more than a night. Lorna put her arm around Ella’s shoulders and tried to think of a way to tell her the simple truth: that she wanted to go. She looked at Herb, and she saw that he was grinning.
     He knows, she thought. He knows that I want to go, and it’s all right with him. She couldn’t look at Ella when she spoke, but she found it easy to look at Herb — found, in fact, that looking at Herb gave her the steady voice she needed to speak to Ella. Herb had an admirable generosity, that readiness to say yes, to think yes, to give the benefit of the doubt to someone’s ideas, to urge a person on. It showed in his eyes, his grin.
     Lorna gave Ella a squeeze and told her the truth, “I want to go.” Her heart was pounding, and she hoped that Ella couldn’t see how excited she was about going, how eager she was to go, how exhilarated she’d been by the tests she’d been given, how thrilled she was to have a talent that she could display. A devil-may-care cranny of her mind, electrified by her success and by the anticipation of the adventures that lay ahead in Maryland, wanted her to blurt out everything, to amaze Herb and Ella with her secret life and secret talent. The counsel of wiser crannies kept her quiet, told her that it was daring enough to admit that she wanted to go to Maryland to work on the calculation of artillery tables.

[to be continued on Wednesday, October 5, 2022]

In Topical Guide 353, Mark Dorset considers Books, Real and Fictional: Real: The Analytical Engine; and Institutions and Organizations: Real and Fictional: Real from this episode.

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