Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton poses for a series of photos with the Apollo guidance software she and her team developed at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.. She later attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and practiced acting doing children's theater while a Junior League of Cleveland member. [23] This included error detection and recovery software such as restarts and the Display Interface Routines (also known as the Priority Displays), which Hamilton designed and developed. And I asked him what part, and he said, 'The Witch,' and I said, 'The Witch?!' [38] Paul Curto, senior technologist who nominated Hamilton for a NASA Space Act Award, called Hamilton's work "the foundation for ultra-reliable software design".[23]. Margaret Hamilton, the actress whose role as the cackling Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz unnerved generations of children, died yesterday, apparently of a heart attack, at a nursing home in Salisbury, Connecticut. Her husband is Paul Boynton Meserve (13 June1931 - 20 May1938)( divorced)( 1 child). From my own perspective, the software experience itself (designing it, developing it, evolving it, watching it perform and learning from it for future systems) was at least as exciting as the events surrounding the mission. They're really scared for a second. [4] She studied mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1955 before transferring to Earlham College, where her mother was a student;[7][8] she earned a BA in mathematics with a minor in philosophy in 1958. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). I will return to work on one condition no more fireworks!" was ranked 99th in the 2005 American Film Institute survey of the most memorable movie quotes. I was the first one to get it to work. A brief history of the famous 1969 photo of the software that sent humans to the Moon. Hamilton, M.; Hackler, W. R. (2004). Her "priority display" innovation had created a knock-on risk that astronaut and computer would slip out of synch just when it mattered most. The character is considered to be one of the screen's greatest and most memorable villains of all time. Hamilton and Ray Bolger were cast members in the 1966 fantasy film The Daydreamer, a collection of stories by Hans Christian Andersen. Margaret Elaine Hamilton (born Heafield on August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. At 83 years old, Margaret Hamilton height A few months after filming Oz, she appeared in Babes in Arms (1939) as Jeff Steele's aunt, Martha, a society do-gooder who made it her goal to send the gang of child actors, led by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, to a work farm. "The award included the largest financial award that NASA had ever presented to any individual up to that point. In 1954, she graduated from Thomas Hancock High School in Minnesota. A few years later, they were reunited on Broadway for the short-lived musical Come Summer. What followed next were brief messages from Apollo 11 to Robledo de Chabela in Spain; and from Spain to Houston, where Margaret was; from Houston to Robledo; and from Robledo to Apollo 11. In the 1940s and 1950s, Hamilton had a long-running role on the radio series Ethel and Albert (or The Couple Next Door) in which she played the lovable, scattered Aunt Eva (name later changed to Aunt Effie). In 2003, she was given the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for scientific and technical contributions. [16] Hamilton also served as Director of the Software Engineering Division. [18] In 1979, she was a guest speaker at a University of Connecticut children's literature class. She also wrote a program for the Cambridge Air Force Research Laboratory. For ABC's short-lived radio anthology Theatre-Five, she played a manipulative ailing Aunt Lettie to Joan Lorring as the unhappy niece Maude in "Noose of Pearls". Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio to Jennie and Walter Hamilton. [13][14][15] Her work contributed to Lorenz's publications on chaos theory. Hamilton, now an independent computer scientist, described for MIT News in 2009 her contributions to the Apollo software which last month was added in its entirety to the code-sharing site GitHub: From my own perspective, the software experience itself (designing it, developing it, evolving it, watching it perform and learning from it for future systems) was at least as exciting as the events surrounding the mission. "Deeply Integrated Guidance Navigation Unit (DI-GNU) Common Software Architecture Principles". Soon after, Neil Armstrong radioed the expected message to Houston: The Eagle has landed, The Eagle has landed. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 1958. NY 10036. Pufnstuf herself being spoofed by actress Billie Hayes. Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Jennie (Adams) and Walter Hamilton. Hamilton's line from The Wizard of Oz "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!" They like to hear it but they 'don't' like to hear it. She was best known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West, and her Kansas counterpart Almira Gulch, in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz.A former schoolteacher, she worked as a character actress in . Pres. Related: Apollo Coder and 'Apollo 13' Actor Receive Presidential Medals of Freedom, SpaceX scrubs Crew-6 astronaut launch due to ignition-fluid issue, Experience SpaceX's Crew-6 astronaut mission with these amazing photos, DNA from 4 American presidents will launch to deep space, Asteroid Ryugu is rich in organic molecules that can be building blocks of life, On This Day In Space: Feb. 26, 1966: 1st launch of Saturn 1B rocket, Your monthly guide to stargazing & space science, Subscribe today and save an extra 5% with code 'LOVE5', Issues delivered straight to your door or device. Mention the name Margaret Hamilton to a Millennial, and chances are they won't be able to pick her out of a line-up. They have a daughter named Lauren. During the 1960s and 1970s, Hamilton appeared regularly on television. Hamilton was concerned with legitimizing software development as an engineering discipline. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science since 2015. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. When she reprised her role as the Wicked Witch in a 1976 episode of Sesame Street, "the show's producers were flooded with letters from parents saying it was too frightening for children. The original caption, she says, reads: Here, Margaret is shown standing beside listings of the software developed by her and the team she was in charge of, the LM [lunar module] and CM [command module] on-board flight software team.. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. [13] Hamilton continued acting regularly until 1982; her last roles were two guest appearances as veteran journalist Thea Taft (in 1979 and 1982) on Lou Grant. [12] She developed software for predicting weather, programming on the LGP-30 and the PDP-1 computers at Marvin Minsky's Project MAC. They're scared. For other people named Margaret Hamilton, see. Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2022-06-01 07:53, By Maia Weinstock | MIT News Office Four years later, she obtained the Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana (USA). She was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. Hamilton had prepared for just this situation years before: There was one other failsafe that Hamilton likes to remember. [16] A Republican, she supported the campaign of Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election. By Maia Weinstock | MIT News Office and they continued. The on-board flight software captured these alarms with the "never supposed to happen displays" interrupting the astronauts with priority alarm displays. [2010]. )[citation needed]. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA 's Apollo program. In 1976, Hamilton co-founded with Saydean Zeldin a company called Higher Order Software (HOS)[40] to further develop ideas about error prevention and fault tolerance emerging from their experience at MIT working on the Apollo program. [4][5] The family later moved to Michigan,[6] where Margaret graduated from Hancock High School in 1954. The computer (or rather the software in it) was smart enough to recognize that it was being asked to perform more tasks than it should be performing. She was contributing writer for Space.com (opens in new tab) for 10 years before joining full-time, freelancing since 2012. mystery guest on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV program. Margaret Hamilton was born on August 17, 1936. "Hamilton was honored by NASA in 2003, when she was presented a special award recognizing the value of her innovations in the Apollo software development," NASA wrote in 2016. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. [4] However, in mid-1959, Hamilton began working for Edward Norton Lorenz, in the meteorology department at MIT. In the 1960s, Hamilton was a regular on another CBS soap opera, The Secret Storm, playing the role of Grace Tyrell's housekeeper, Katie. Three minutes before the lunar lander reached the Moon's surface, several computer alarms were triggered. However, in By Your Leave (1934), she plays his housekeeper, and in Saratoga (1937), she has a colloquy with Morgan regarding a cosmetic product he invented (with side glances and eye rolls by Morgan as to its effect on her "beauty"). Phil Davis We took our work seriously, many of us beginning this journey while still in our 20s. Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". She went on to appear in These Three (1936), Saratoga, You Only Live Once, When's Your Birthday?, Nothing Sacred (all 1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), My Little Chickadee (with W. C. Fields, 1940), and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (with Harold Lloyd, 1947). The solution came from a young Margaret who assured the Mission Director that she could safely ignore the two error messages. The content of the programs was printed on continuous paper and stored in large folders. She appeared on Broadway in the musical Goldilocks opposite Don Ameche and Elaine Stritch, gave a lighter touch to the domineering Parthy Anne Hawks in the 1966 revival of Show Boat (dancing with David Wayne), and was the tender Aunt Eller in the 1968 Lincoln Center revival of Oklahoma!. It is possible to find relevant details of the biography of this extraordinary pioneer on many websites. Margaret Hamilton. Earlham College, Richmond. Omissions? Quote her most famous line, however, and watch their eyes blink awake with recognition: "I'll get you my pretty! Only co-star Frank Morgan played more roles (five) in the film. Hat, Coat and Glove. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented on November 22, 2016 by the President of the United States, for her brilliant work during the Apollo missions in the 1960s. Thompson, Arthur A.; Strickland, A. J., (1996), "Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases", Last edited on 26 February 2023, at 16:40, Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, "001: A Full Life Cycle Systems Engineering and Software Development Environment", Universal Systems Language for Preventative Systems Engineering, A Formal Universal Systems Semantics for SysML, Universal Systems Language: Lessons Learned from Apollo, "President Obama Names Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom", "Former Earlham Student Had Role in Moon Flight", "2009 Outstanding Alumni and Distinguished Service Awards", "The Woman Who Taught Me Margaret Hamilton MAKERS Moment", "Margaret Hamilton: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Took Us to the Moon", "The statistical prediction of solutions of dynamic equations", "AGC Conference 1: Margaret Hamilton's introduction", "Scene at MIT: Margaret Hamilton's Apollo code", "NASA Engineers and Scientists-Transforming Dreams Into Reality", The History of Apollo On-board Guidance, Navigation, and Control, Keyboard and Display Program and Operation, "Moon landing memories:'Apollo 11 changed civilisation and I had a part in it', "Tales from the Lunar Module Guidance Computer", "Computer Got Loaded, letter to the editor of Datamation", Higher Order Software Evaluation and Critique, "Federal User Offers Free CAD/CAM Software", "And/Or Programs: A New Approach to Structured Programming", "Overview of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. (HTI) 001", "ICSE 2018 Plenary Sessions Margaret Hamilton", "What to Know About the Scientist who Invented the Term "Software Engineering", "NASA Engineers and Scientists Transforming Dreams Into Reality", "Margaret Hamilton: 2017 Fellow Biography", "Margaret Hamilton, the Engineer Who Took the Apollo to the Moon", "Her code got humans on the moon and invented software itself", "Software and a Woman at the Heart of Lunar Triumph", "A moonlit tribute to a moon landing icon", "Honour for software writer on Apollo moon mission", "White House honors two of tech's female pioneers", "Margaret Hamilton Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom", "The 2017 Fellow Award Acceptance Speech", "Lego's 'Women of NASA' toy set is finally on sale and it's already Amazon's best-selling toy", "Investiture of scientist Margaret Hamilton as an honorary doctor of the UPC", "Margaret Hamilton Accepts 2019 Washington Award Nomination", "Bard College - 2019 Honorary Degree Recipients", "Margaret Hamilton's sister shares her memories as Seattle's seniors celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing", "James Cox Hamilton, at 77; lawyer was quiet warrior for First Amendment", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)&oldid=1141753509. Starred in the live on-stage musical "A Little Night Music" (with actress Jean Simmons in the lead role) during the mid-1970s in San Francisco. [10] She says her poet father and headmaster grandfather inspired her to include a minor in philosophy in her studies. We had to find a way and we did. Hamilton was the recipient of various honours, including NASAs Exceptional Space Act Award (2003). Margaret Hamilton was born Margaret Heafield on August 17, 1936 in Paoli, Indiana. Opposite Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, she played a heavily made-up witch in Comin' Round the Mountain, where her character and Costello go toe-to-toe with voodoo dolls made of each other. She helped write the computer code for the command and lunar modules used on the Apollo missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early 70s. Hamilton also appears as an unidentified flying witch during the tornado scene, which may have been the Wicked Witch of the West or her sister, the Wicked Witch of the East. Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Jennie (Adams) and Walter Hamilton. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Between 1969 and 1972, the Apollo program carried out 22 missions: 19 with total success, 2 with partial success and 1 with failure. Margaret Heafield Hamilton was born on August 17, 1936, in Paoli, Indiana. Dishonored Lady. What are the characteristics of the Solar System? [7] Studio executives cut some of Hamilton's more frightening scenes, worrying they would frighten children too much. It even printed out its answers in Latin and Greek. Margaret Hamilton, ne Margaret Heafield, (born August 17, 1936, Paoli, Indiana, U.S.), American computer scientist who was one of the first computer software programmers; she created the term software engineer to describe her work. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. Discover today's celebrity birthdays and explore famous people who share your birthday. ", Hamilton later left MIT to start her own software company, but her name is still most recognized for her lunar landing accomplishments. In 2017, she was one of a handful of Nasa women to be immortalised as a Lego figurine .On the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, Hamilton, 82, looks back on her trailblazing work in. The Opportunity of a Lifetime. Hamilton has published more than 130 papers, proceedings, and reports, about sixty projects, and six major programs. When asked about her experiences on the set of The Wizard of Oz, Hamilton said her biggest fear was that her monstrous film role would give children the wrong idea of who she really was. [11], In Boston, Hamilton initially intended to enroll in graduate study in abstract mathematics at Brandeis University. [61] Hamilton talks about "Errors" and how they influenced her work related to software engineering and how her language, USL, could be used to prevent the majority of "Errors" in a system. We had to find a way and we did. , money, salary, income, and assets. "[13] She appeared as herself in three episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, between 1975 and 1976, because Fred Rogers wanted his viewers to recognize the Wicked Witch was just a character and not something to be afraid of. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 360-361. Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, [22][16] Another part of her team designed and developed the systems software. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Biography. [Related: Apollo Coder and 'Apollo 13' Actor Receive Presidential Medals of Freedom]. Cameron Diaz Biography, Facts & Life Story, Cam Newton Biography, Facts & Life Story, Roman Reigns Biography, Facts & Life Story, Lindsay Lohan Biography, Facts & Life Story, Christopher Lloyd Biography, Facts & Life Story, Michael Chiklis Biography, Facts & Life Story, Computer Scientist, Systems Engineer and Business Owner. Although Margaret planned to study abstract mathematics at Brandeis University, she accepted a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) while her husband attended Harvard Law School. Hamilton, a 24-year-old with an undergrad degree in mathematics, had gotten a job as a programmer at MIT, and the plan was for her to support her husband through his three-year stint at Harvard. Coming up with solutions and new ideas was an adventure. She had a small role in the made-for-television film The Night Strangler (1973) and appeared as a befuddled neighbor on Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, who is a friend of the very similar Mary Wickes. One of the many contributors to this effort was Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which in 1961 contracted with NASA to develop the Apollo programs guidance system. ", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. In 1945, she played the domineering sister of Oz co-star Jack Haley in George White's Scandals, comically trying to prevent him from marrying actress Joan Davis, even going so far as to throw a hatchet at her. Margaret Hamilton Biography Margaret Hamilton was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 9, 1902, the youngest of four children and obtained her teaching certificate in 1923 from the Wheelock . Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller? This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. It is ironic that her performance as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939) was so scary to children, because her first job was as a kindergarten teacher. [17], Hamilton's early experience as a teacher fueled a lifelong interest in educational issues. At the time, no schools taught software engineering, so the team members had to work out any problems on their own. [47] In 1980, British-Israeli computer scientist David Harel published a proposal for a structured programming language derived from HOS from the viewpoint of and/or subgoals. Design & Development: Biography of Margaret Hamilton, American scientist, notable computer scientist who worked at NASA in support of Apollo missions. Hamilton also toured in many plays and musicals, even repeating her role of the Wicked Witch in specially written stage productions of The Wizard of Oz.
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