Gladys West: The “Hidden Figure” of GPS
When was the last time you used GPS?
Maybe over the weekend, to find a restaurant? Or this morning, to map the quickest route to work?
Our customers use it every single day when they collect geo-tagged data in the field with the Fulcrum app.
Since its commercial introduction in the 1990s, GPS has changed the way we live and work. Today, it’s hard to even imagine life without it.
So the next time you use GPS, think of Dr. Gladys West:
West is one of the “hidden figures,” a small group of women who did manual computing for the U.S. military in the 1950s and ’60s. Without her work, GPS as we know it might not exist.
West (born Gladys Mae Brown) grew up in rural Virginia, where her family owned a small farm. She knew she didn’t want to work in the fields or tobacco factory like her parents, so she focused on her schoolwork. “As I got more educated, went into the higher grades, I learned that education was the thing to get me out,” she said.
After graduating at the top of her class, West attended Virginia State College (now University) on scholarship, where she majored in math. “I didn’t quite know what to major in,” she said. “They were trying to tell me, since I was good at all my subjects, that I should major in science or math or something that was more difficult and meant people didn’t major in it.”
In 1956, West went to work at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, where she was one of only four black employees (including her future husband, fellow mathematician Ira West) and just the second black woman to be hired.
“I carried that load round, thinking that I had to be the best that I could be,” she said. “Always doing things just right, to set an example for other people who were coming behind me, especially women.”
At Dahlgren, West collected data from satellites to help determine their exact location as they sent transmissions from around the world. She also used complex algorithms to account for variations in gravitational, tidal, and other forces that distort Earth’s shape to program an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer to deliver a super-accurate model of the planet. This model laid the groundwork for the GPS we use today.
West retired in 1998 after working at Dahlgren for 42 years. Since then, she and her husband have traveled extensively, and she earned her doctorate through a remote program at Virginia Tech.
Capt. Godfrey Weekes, then-commanding officer at Dahlgren, recognized West in a 2017 message about Black History Month. “She rose through the ranks, worked on the satellite geodesy and contributed to the accuracy of GPS and the measurement of satellite data,” he said.
“As Gladys West started her career as a mathematician at Dahlgren in 1956, she likely had no idea that her work would impact the world for decades to come.”
“When you’re working every day, you’re not thinking, ‘What impact is this going to have on the world?’” West said. “You’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to get this right.’”
West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame — one of the Air Force Space Command’s highest honors — in recognition of her contributions to GPS in December, at the age of 87.
