It's a story that is almost unbelievable, in its scale, in its pretensions and in how it predicts the future. Depth of the Great Depression. Unemployment at record height. Soup kitchens seeing masses of people waiting for a meal. So, in the winter of 1938, the Works Progress Administration decides to give computing a chance to reduce unemployment. The Mathematical Tables Project, 400 jobless workers, outfitted with nothing more than paper and pencil, sit at long tables and do that work that will so be done by machines. They compute. All are expected to know how to add and subtract, though the subtilities of subtraction are lost on a few workers. Multiplication requires further training. Only the most elite are given the authority to do division. “Add, Subtract, Unite, Divide” dramatizes the story of Mathematical Tables Project and its intrepid leader, Gertrude Blanch.
She could have been somebody.
A real contender.
If there hadn’t been a global economic depression.
If the world hadn’t been engaged in a world war.
And if she hadn’t been a woman.
Through Fate or Good Fortune or the simple dedication of someone who was not discouraged by rejection, she came to lead the Mathematical Tables Project, a quirky work-relief office that was intended to give employment to workers who were unable to find a job. She turned it into the world’s most power computing organization. At least the most powerful organization before computing people were replaced by computing machines.
She did calculations for the government, for the military, for scientists and engineers. They were championed by Einstein, by John von Neuman, professors from Cornell and MIT. She dined at the White House and sat at tables of power. Until she was forgotten. Forgotten by a country that is more constant in its love of technology than it is in its love of people.
A story of Gertrude Blanch, her best friend Ida Rhodes, and their improbably employer, the Mathematical Tables Project. A story of love, dedication, courage and (brace yourselves) long division.