How Harvard's human computers helped invent modern astronomy

The Harvard College Observatory (now the Center for Astrophysics) in Cambridge, Massachusetts has long been a bastion of astronomical research, its history stretching back to the center's founding in 1839. But for the first forty years of its existence, the HCO was quite literally an old boys club. While amateur female astronomers helped fund and even construct the observatory's telescopes, "it wasn't really seen as proper to allow them out on the roof, in the night, on their own, to actually use instruments," Daina Bouquin, Head Librarian of the Wolbach Library at the Center for Astrophysics and lead of the PHaEDRA project, told Engadget. "The beginning of the whole capacity to do that starts like photography, with people putting together these all-sky surveys," she continued. "And the first group of people to do that, to put together a full survey of the entire visible universe at the time was the Harvard Computers."