Before the days of digital computers, human computers were people who performed mathematical caclulations, most often women. This largely forgotten role was brought to the public attention by the film 'Hidden Figures', about the women who performed scientific calculations at NASA.
Used on Chap. 23: page 569
Links:
IMDb: Hidden Figures -- the film- IMDb: Hidden Figures -- the film
- williamcollinsbooks.co.uk: book: Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. Margot Lee Shetterly (2017).
- nasa.gov: NASA: From Hidden to Modern Figures
- retrocomputing.stackexchange.com: StackExchange: What did the "programs" that "human computers" executed look like?
More recent reCAPTCHA -- human creating training data for machine learning