““might be just a set of equations and eye-blearing numbers disembodied from all physical significance. She might not hear another word about the work until a piece appeared in Air Scoop or Aviation or Air Trails. Or never. For many men, a computer was a piece of living hardware, an appliance that inhaled one set of figures and exhaled another. Once a girl finished a particular job, the calculations were whisked away into the shadowy kingdom of the engineers. “Woe unto thee if they shall make thee a computer,” joked a column in Air Scoop. “For the Project Engineer will take credit for whatsoever thou doth that is clever and full of glory. But if he slippeth up, and maketh a wrong calculation, or pulleth a boner of any kind whatsoever, he shall lay the mistake at thy door when he is called to account and he shall say, ‘What can you””
