Word of the Day - Conte

conte

Pronunciation: /kɒnt/
noun
1 A short story as a form of literary composition.
1.1 A medieval narrative tale.

Origin
French, based on Latin computare reckon, sum up.

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"Hidden Figures" is a movie whose conte (story/screenplay) is that of a group of black, female "computers"
working for NASA during NASA's very early days, before desegregation. It was before the IBM calculating machine which we now call a computer. The women did all the calculations to verify each launch and
acceleration burn for the "Project Mercury" Redstone and Atlas rockets. Every day, the mission parameters changed. Every day the calculations done by the computers had to be re-done. The Redstone rocket was able to
achieve a sub-orbital trajectory, but their calculations determined it would have to be the Atlas for a successful orbital launch. Even when the IBM was installed, it was these same unheralded women who programmed
it to do the same calculations at electronic speed. It was, in part, because of their work that Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and John Glenn succeeded in their trips into space as the earliest American astronauts.

Photo credits: NASA