Female computers

I first met Paris Observatory astronomer Suzanne Débarbat on a sweltering day in July 2012. She spent the whole afternoon as my guide. She told me about the other women who had come before her. That was how I discovered the female computers. LH

Image: Photo of Suzanne Débarbat with a model of the Cassini II satellite at Paris Observatory, 2012, by LH.

'In 1892, Klumpke was appointed the first and only female director of a bureau of measures at Paris Observatory, in the face of fierce competition from 50 men. She was placed in charge of four women known as the "demoiselles of the Carte du Ciel".'

Laurence Bobis, ‘Gendered Stars – Venus and Mars’, from 'Beta Persei', by Lily Hibberd, 2015, pp.98-102. Image: Klumpke with the female computers at the Paris Carte du Ciel Bureau, c1900. Courtesy Paris Observatory.

Vast quantities of handwritten logbooks piled high on steel shelves in Sydney Observatory's basement were the first indication that I had of the enormity of the Astrographic Catalogue, and the number of women who were responsible for measuring hundreds of thousands of Southern Hemisphere stars. TS

Image: Photograph of Sydney Observatory library, 2019. Photo: LH.

At Paris Observatory, the Henry Brothers saw that millions of stars in the Milky Way were beyond sight, even through a telescope. When they joined a camera to an equatorial telescope in 1884, the idea was spawned to capture the universe in photographs. Every star in the celestial sphere would be mapped, and its brightness determined. LH

Image: Detail of photo of Paris equatorial astrograph, photographer and date unknown. Collection Paris Observatory.

The French were leading the Eurocentric race to conquer the star-filled sky, Sydney's colonial Government Astronomer Henry Russell was not to be outdone: inspired by the Brothers Henry, in 1892 he built his own instrument, which he called the 'Star Camera'. LH

Image: Photographic glass plate negative, interior Sydney Observatory's first astrographic dome, 1892, photographer unknown. Collection Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

A new universe was conceived on a Cartesian plane. Stars were seared onto hundreds of thousands of glass plates, over which a uniform grid was printed, the same for every single Astrographic Catalogue plate worldwide. LH

Réseau plate in box for measuring astronomical photographs, made by P Gautier, France, used at Sydney Observatory, 1887-1891. Collection Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Photo: Chris Brothers, 1984.

Women were specifically employed in the role of computers: ‘young ladies, whose sole equipment for the work was good health, good eyesight, quickness at figures and aptitude for microscopic observation’. TS

'South Australian Register', 13 Oct. 1900, in T. Stevenson's PhD, 2016, p.178. Image: Woman (probably Bellamy) using plate measuring machine Sydney Observatory, photographer unknown.

The uniformity of the work and its repetition made the observatories into ‘factories of astronomical labour’. TS

Image: Dorothea Klumpke with the female computers at the Paris Carte du Ciel Bureau, c1900. Courtesy Paris Observatory.

The reality is that the power to look had always been in the domain of men. LH

Image: Government Astronomer Harley Wood in observing chair using the Melbourne astrograph at Sydney Observatory, 35mm acetate film, 1967-1969. Photo: David Mist. Collection Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. ©David Mist.

‘I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images.’

Adrienne Rich, ‘Planetarium’ from 'Collected Poems: 1950-2012'. Image: Still from video ‘In the Footsteps of Venus’, LH, including a detail of a photograph of Paris Observatory computer. Collection Paris Observatory.

The women who calculated and measured the stars were chosen because they were perceived as accurate, detailed and able to work in a machine-like manner. Therefore the ideal support for the male astronomer who was the discoverer, the hero and natural born leader. ‘The role of astrographic measurer suited the late-19th century feminine ideal and its ‘natural sphere’. TS

TS PhD, 2015. Image: Still from video “Counting: the women star computers”, TS & LH, 2020.

Winsome Bellamy was among several measurers and computers who completed the Sydney and Melbourne sections of the Astrographic Catalogue at Sydney Observatory. Her role at Sydney Observatory spanned 20 years, from 1948–1968. TS

Image: Photograph of Winsome Bellamy and the Hilger machine, c1954. Photographer unknown. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Science.

It was jokingly called a spanker because it was deemed too small to swat a fly. LH

Image: Detail (enhanced) of photograph of Henrietta Levitt’s fly spanker, Harvard College Observatory. Date unknown, photographer unknown. Courtesy Digital Access to a Sky Century at Harvard.

'It was the same for us. We working in pairs: one at the machine, the other computer taking down the figures in the logbook. And we each took turns because the machine made our eyes very tired.'

From video 'Female Computers' by LH & TS, 2020, based on WB interview by TS, 2011. Image: Photograph of Mary Allen and Ethel Wilcocks measuring astrographic plates, 1941. Collection Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

'And we had a real eye for detail... We had to compare those tiny dots using small discs of clear acetate, which we had to slide onto the plate with tweezers!'

Original script by L. HIbberd for video 'Female Computers', 2019, based on T. Stevenson's PhD, 2016. Image: Box of magnitude scales for comparative use. Photo: TS. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences.

'It wasn't that we were complaining. Our director Harvey Wood was a charming man. Sometimes for lunch I would run down to Circular Quay, and I wasn't always back on time…'

Text based on interview with WB by TS, 2011. Image: Detail of photograph with Harley Wood, c1950s. Courtesy Winsome Bellamy and Toner Stevenson.

'For us it was the social times that made the work worthwhile. In between times we’d be knitting or doing crosswords over cups of tea.'

From video 'Female Computers' by LH & TS, 2020, based on interview with WB by TS, 2011. Image: Photograph of Female Computers as bridemaids, taken at Sydney Observatory, c1950s. Photographer unknown. Courtesy WB and TS.

Sydney Observatory’s Astrographic bureau was on the top floor, in a special annexe pictured here in the early 1960s. Computer Winsome Bellamy recalls how she climbed up the ‘little twisty stairs’, through a library, to a small room behind the door – ‘our measuring room’.

WB interview by TS, 2011. Image: Photograph, exterior Sydney Observatory, black and white print, photographer unknown, Sydney Observatory, 1870-1979. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences.

In Australia, at the time, the cost of female labour was much less that of men. And the work was considered repetitive, with little opportunity for discoveries. TS

Image: Detail from image of 'woman using plate measuring machine', Sydney Observatory, c1960s. Date & photographer unknown. The shape of the hand indicates this is Winsome Bellamy, after 20 years of work at the Observatory.

Although some women stayed single and worked for numerous years at the observatories, most of these highly skilled women never established what would be considered a career in astronomy by contemporary standards. TS

T. Stevenson, PhD, 2016, p.194. Image: Sydney Observatory employment record card for Margaret Colville. Photo: TS. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences.

One of the first women working in astronomy in Australia, Muriel Heagney (1885-1974) was employed as an astrographic measurer and computer at Melbourne Observatory from 1906 to 1910.

T. Stevenson, ‘Equal pay for women champion was one of the "hidden figures" of Australian astronomy’, 2019, Sydney Observatory blog, online. Image: Photograph of the Melbourne Measuring Bureau, 'The Australasian', 27 Apr 1901, p.30.

'When Muriel Heagney took up her post as a female computer at the Observatory in 1906, she was paid 54% that of her male counterparts for the same work... For more than 50 years, from 1914, 'she actively campaigned for women to have equal employment rights and pay, and to be able to maintain their employment after marriage'.

T. Stevenson, PhD, 2016, p.206. Image: detail of book cover, 'Are Women Taking Men's Jobs?', Muriel Heagney, 1935.

The first women employed in 1908 by Royal Observatory Edinburgh to complete the measuring and computing of the Perth Observatory Astrographic catalogue Zone were Sarah and Isabella Falconer. Edinburgh Observatory. TS

TS PhD, 2015. Image: female computers at Perth Observatory, c. 1910. Collection Royal Observatory Edinburgh. Public Domain.

'I don't remember doing any complicated maths. But it was important to eliminate what they called the personality error. After all, we were only human computers.'

From video 'Female Computers' by LH and TS, 2020. Image: Photograph Greenwich Observatory Astrographic Catalogue computer personality error table.

All the same, women found a place in astronomy. This was, for Dorothea Klumpke, the dawn of an era when ‘astronomical science now becomes universal! She knows no boundaries, no rank, no sex, no age’. LH & TS

D. Klumpke, 1899, ‘The Work of Women in Astronomy’, The Observatory, vol. 22, pp. 295–300. Image: The female computers at the Observatory of Paris, c1900, at centre Dorothea Klumpke. Collection Paris Observatory.

Sadly, the astrographic project was abandoned by the mid-1970s, and with it the physical evidence and public memory of the work undertaken by the female computers. LH

Image: Photograph, Sydney Observatory, photographer unknown, 1870-1979. Collection Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

When Toner Stevenson was working on her PhD thesis on the Sydney Computers, she discovered that the original dome had been left in a paddock, so she and others at Sydney Observatory decided that they should restore it to its former glory.

Toner Stevenson with the restored heritage dome prior to installation, 4 November 2014 Photo: C. Rowe.

Tap on the image to listen to Dr Toner Stevenson on ABC Radio National.

Source: ABC Radio National, ‘The Ladies' Log: Who (not what) were the first computers?’ Science Friction, with Natasha Mitchell, 10 Nov 2019. Image: Photograph of eyepiece, Sydney Observatory star plate measuring machine (Sydney 'A'), collection Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences. Photo: Andrew Jacob, 2020.

I was instantly taken with the story of American-born Dorothea Klumpke, one of the few women to attain a senior position and recognition for her work in astronomy in Europe before the mid-20th century. LH

Image: Video still 'In the Footsteps of Venus' by Lily Hibberd, featuring a portrait of Dorothea Klumpke c.1890s. Public domain.

I wondered, who were these women and what did they do? Only the machines and a few photographs remained to tell their story. But honorary astronomer Suzanne Débarbat had not forgotten them. Here she is operating the astrographic plate measuring machine at Paris Observatory. LH

Image: video still 'In the Footsteps of Venus' by LH.

But how was it that the Female Computers came to measure the stars on glass plates instead of through a telescope? Whose idea was it to industrialise the computers' work and organise the universe into a Cartesian grid? LH

‘A Section of the Constellation Cygnus’, 1885, by Paul Henry. Collection Metropolitan Museum. Public domain.

In 1887, 20 observatories around the world committed to create a vast catalogue and photographic map of the stars. A congress at Paris Observatory united 56 people from 16 countries; not a single female among them. LH

Photo (detail) Paris Astrographic Catalogue Congress, photographed by Paul Nadar, 1887. Collection Paris Observatory. Sydney's Government Astronomer, Henry Russell is visible with his great beard in the second row.

In 1890, Russell took a series of photos using a makeshift astrograph, claiming these were ‘the first of their kind of the Southern Skies’. LH

Image: Photographic positive, the stars showing the area around the Orion constellation, Sydney Observatory, photograph by James Short and H. C. Russell, Sydney, 19 October, 1890. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Science.

Plates were carefully measured based on this grid system, each star measured according to an 'x' and a 'y' coordinate; and always twice over. This is a page from Sydney computer Winsome Bellamy's Astrographic Catalogue measure logbook from December 1961. LH

Comparative measurements of AC Plate 867 by Winsome Bellamy. Collection NSW State Archives. Photo: Toner Stevenson.

The Computers worked an average eight hours a day, with one eye straining at the eyepiece most of the time. LH

Image: Detail of eyepiece, optical instrument for measurement of astronomical photograph plates made by Troughton and Simms, 1915. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Science.

Tasked to precisely position thousands of stars on the plates, the computers worked on strange machines. Similar to a microscope, but with the crosshairs of a telescope, the machines had fine screws that aligned the eyepiece with a star and a graded measurement ruler. LH & TS

Image: Photograph of assistant on the Astrograph Project, Melbourne Observatory, c.1905, unknown photographer. Museums Victoria Collection. Public domain.

Only now the astronomer’s eye was replaced by the eyes of the female computers, who were observing and determining the position and brightness of the stars. LH & TS

Image: Detail of photograph of Mary Allen and Ethel Wilcocks measuring astrographic plates, 1941. Collection Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

What were the special skills, that made this labour so 'female'? LH

Image: Photograph of Winsome Bellamy and female computers, c1954. Courtesy Winsome Bellamy and Toner Stevenson.

The work could be performed in the comfort of the Observatory interior, required little physical strength and the women could be isolated to some degree from the men. Strict rules left little opportunity to work outside the realm of what had been specified and the quota of stars to be measured and positions computed each day.’ The problem was the early observatories had no female lavatories - a great inconvenience. TS

TS PhD, 2015. Image: Still from video “Counting: the women star computers”, TS & LH, 2020.

'We were jealous in fact, because in other famous observatories, like Harvard, they had the “fly spanker”. This device was specially invented to compare and rate star magnitudes.'

From video 'Female Computers' by LH & TS, 2020. Image: Detail of Harvard astronomer Henrietta Levitt’s fly spankers at Harvard College Observatory, date unknown. Photo: Lindsay Smith. Courtesy Harvard College Archives.

At Harvard, the women worked side-by-side, like us, but the labour they were doing was of a different nature. LH & TS

Image: Photograph of Williamina Fleming (right) and Mabel C. Stevens at work, c1890. Harvard University Archives. Public domain.

'The women at Harvard were doing things we never imagined possible. They were examining the nature of stars. On her own, Annie Jump Cannon analysed and classified the spectral characteristics of around 350,000 stars – more stars in a lifetime than anyone else.' LH

Original script for video 'Female Computers', 2019. Image: Detail of photograph of Harvard astronomer Annie Jump Cannon with a star plate light lectern, c1930. Smithsonian Instituttion Archives, photographer unknown. License: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

'None of the high-powered work was done by anyone but the men. We just handed over our logbooks.' WB

Winsome Bellamy interview by TS, 2011. Image: Photograph of Sydney Computers with Winsome Bellamy, right. Courtesy W. Bellamy & T. Stevenson.

'It was slow work but it was not such a terrible job... We talked all the time, while we were measuring, swapping gossip and jokes.'

From video 'Female Computers' by LH & TS, 2020, based on interview with WB by TS, 2011. Image: Photograph, Sydney Observatory Astrographic Bureau c1960, Yvonne Donohue, Shirley Wall and Winsome Bellamy. Courtesy W. Bellamy & T. Stevenson.

'When it was nice we’d head out to Observatory Park for lunch under the Moreton Bay Figs, watching the ships on the harbour.'

From video 'Female Computers' by LH & TS, 2020, based on interview with WB by TS, 2011. Image: Winsome Bellamy personal album; Sydney Computers in Observatory Hill Park, 1948, (L-R) Margaret Colville, Renee Day, Jean Campbell, Verlie Maurice, Patricia Lawler. Photo: TS. Courtesy WB.

‘Our job was just routine, and we got on with it… we had a great time, apart from work’. WB

W. Bellamy interview by TS, 2011. Image: Detail of photograph of Winsome Bellamy, c1955. Courtesy WB & TS.

For the women who measured the stars, the low rate of pay was not the only drawback. It was not until 1969 that a woman could continue to work in a public service position as a permanent staff member once she married. TS

T. Steveson PhD, 2016. p.194. Image: Sydney Observatory employment record card for Nancy Nolan. Photo: T. Stevenson. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences.

‘We started at nine in the morning. Nobody was supposed to sign the book after nine. And then there was a red line drawn across the book and my name was put in.’ WB

W. Bellamy interview by TS, 2011. Image: Sydney Observatory employment register. Photo: T. Stevenson. Collection Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences.

'Heagney is better known as a pioneer of women’s rights and equal pay, a feminist and trade unionist, but it was those four formative years, from the age of 21 when she was calculating the position of stars and determining their magnitudes (brightness), that really interested me.'

TS ‘Equal pay for women champion was one of the "hidden figures" of Australian astronomy’, 2019, Sydney Observatory blog. Image: Detail, book cover 'Are Women Taking Men's Jobs?' Muriel Heagney, 1935.

In 1974, the 'Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission extended the minimum wage to include women workers', and 'the following week Muriel Heagney died in poverty at the age of 89'.

Source: Victorian Women’s Trust, Gender Equality Timeline, 2020, online. Image: Muriel A. Heagney. Source: Latrobe Library Journal, No 15 April 1975.

Knott and Makintosh both left Edinburgh Observatory in 1913. On May 21, 1913, a bomb exploded at the base of the Observatory tower. A mysterious woman had carried the bomb in her handbag, and so it was attributed to suffragette protesters. TS

Image: WSPU leaders Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, c. 1908. Source: Wikimedia. Public Domain.

And 'they were just like little black spots’.

WB interviewed by TS, 2011. Image: detail of astrographic star plate, by Paul & Prosper Henry, 1897. Collection Paris Observatory.

'From 1916 to 1968, twenty-two computers at Sydney Observatory classified around 740,000 stars on 1400 plates of the Southern Sky.'

From video 'Female Computers' by LH & TS, 2020. Image: Lithograph, 'Sydney Astrographic Zone', Department of Lands, Sydney, 1895. Collection Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

Sydney Observatory Astronomer Nick Lomb remembers the Astrographic Dome making its way across Sydney Harbour Bridge like a ‘snail in the night’, when it was removed in 1986. LH

Image: Photograph by Nick Lomb, 1986.

In an uncanny turn of events, two women were working in parallel, both toward making visible the memory and the labour of the Female Computers; Lily at the Observatory of Paris and Toner Stevenson at Sydney Observatory.

In 2015, at Paris Observatory, daguerreotypist Dominique Genty and I were saddened to see the neglected state of the Astrographic dome. But, after many decades of obscurity, with the plates and their measures all but lost, we are, in the words of Ursula K Le Guin, working to 'keep women’s words, women’s works alive and powerful'.

Back to Earth

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

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