Gladys West was part of the team that developed the Global Positioning System in the 1950s and 1960s. 19, 2018 photo, Gladys West and her husband Ira West stand in their home in King George, Va. Although she might not have grasped its future usage, she was pleased by the company she kept. The process that led to GPS is too scientific for a newspaper story, but Gladys West would say it took a lot of work - equations checked and double-checked, along with lots of data collection and analysis.
#Gladys west software#
Data was entered into large scale “super computers” that filled entire rooms, and she worked on computer software that processed geoid heights, or precise surface elevations. She collected information from the orbiting machines, focusing on information that helped to determine their exact location as they transmitted from around the world. While he spent most of his career developing computer programs for ballistic missiles launched from submarines, her calculations eventually led to satellites. “That was a great time to be at the base,” he said. One was a mathematician named Ira West, and the two dated for 18 months before they married in 1957.
She began her career in 1956, the second black woman hired at the base and one of only four black employees. “That’s when life really started,” she said. She sought jobs where she could apply her skills and eventually got a call from the Dahlgren base, then known as the Naval Proving Ground and now called Naval Support Facility Dahlgren.
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