The majority of the 80 women who worked for Pickering over the years as cataloguers and calculators, are remembered not individually but collectively, by the moniker Pickering’s Harem. The less-than-enlightened nickname reflects the status of women at a time when they were–with rare exception–expected to devote their energies to breeding and homemaking or to bettering their odds of attracting a husband. It’s hard to tout Pickering as a wholly progressive man: by limiting the assistants’ work to largely clerical duties, he reinforced the era’s common assumption that women were cut out for little more than secretarial tasks. These women, referred to as “computers,” were the only way that Pickering could achieve his goal of photographing and cataloging the entire night sky.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 02:22:48 +0000
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