When Computers Were Human (57 page)

Blanch approached her loyalty hearing with the same logical care that she brought to her computing plans. She knew that she was a minor figure in the drama and would gain nothing from grand statements or denunciations. She could not behave as the author Lillian Hellman had behaved
in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and declaim, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.”
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Her best strategy lay in arguing that the charges were false, in showing that she was a valuable government scientist, and in suggesting that there was nothing to gain from dismissing her. She gathered letters of support from her fellow scientists, asking those who knew her personally to attest to her loyalty and her value to the government. She also drafted and redrafted her statement for the board, refining the logic, honing the evidence, creating the kind of defense that only a mathematician could make.

“Let us assume, for a moment,” Blanch began, “that both my sister and my brother-in-law could be called somewhat radically inclined. It does not follow that I, too, must share their views—in fact, the probability is not even high that there is a correlation between their views and mine.” It was not an easy task to dispose of a communist who shared the same parents and who had once shared the same house. By starting with this issue, Blanch risked losing credibility with the board, but if she could make her case, then the rest would be easy to handle. She spent a few minutes discussing her relationship with her sister, commenting on how sisters could be close but have different political opinions, and then moved to the subject of communist periodicals. “I personally do not read the
Daily Worker
,” she remarked; “the newspaper does not happen to be to my taste, nor does it reflect my political sympathies.” She ignored the issue of her voting registration and would not deny that she had signed petitions, though she admitted only to signing papers that called for the “admittance of Jews to Palestine.” She concluded her presentation by stating, “I think I may say that I am conservative in my tastes, and I have never leaned toward radical movements of any sort.”
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Blanch understood herself well enough to know that she was not a revolutionary and that she preferred to work within existing social structures, even at times like these. If she were a communist, then she was the sort of communist that had been educated at the czar's expense, a communist who liked nothing better than Western art, music, and theater, a communist who deeply desired to purchase a home of her own. Her most radical idea was the notion that women could be mathematicians, that they could work outside the family, that they could have a role in public affairs. Her presentation was bolstered by interviews with neighbors and coworkers. A few suggested that she might have liberal inclinations, but none questioned her commitment to the United States. When the board passed judgment on her case, they declared that they had “no objection on grounds of Loyalty” to her continued employment at the institute.
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The hearing resolved the charges against Blanch and allowed her to return
to her job, but it did not end the threats to the National Bureau of Standards and the Institute for Numerical Analysis.

The Bureau of Standards was attacked in the winter of 1953, after Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as president and returned the Republican Party to power. The new cabinet member responsible for the National Bureau of Standards, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, was highly critical of government workers. He frequently spoke of removing employees who were trying to “hamper, hoodwink and wreck the new administration.” He complained about “the theories of foreign socialists” and “the notions of local egg-heads” and finally promised that he was “going to improve the situation by finding means to replace [disloyal employees].”
⁴⁴

In the first weeks of his administration, John Curtiss came within Weeks's sights. Curtiss was an unconventional man, a “bachelor who enjoyed fast cars and plenty of good food and drink,” according to his friend John Todd.
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He was known to hold large and boisterous parties in his small apartment. “He invited hundreds (it seemed) of guests,” reported one member of the institute staff, “and one was very lucky if you managed to get inside.”
⁴⁶
Behind the flamboyant lifestyle was the suggestion, uncomfortable to the age, that John Curtiss might be a homosexual. Government agencies generally considered such individuals vulnerable to blackmail and hence poor security risks.
⁴⁷
In early March, Curtiss was informed that he had been identified as a likely homosexual and that he must choose between a public dismissal and a quiet resignation. His colleagues encouraged him to appeal the ruling. After considering his situation, Curtiss decided to leave quietly. “I have a great desire
not
to be a cause celebre,” he wrote, and added that he desired to have “a scientific career which will be a little more constructive than that of a professional victim.”
⁴⁸

A month after Curtiss left, Secretary Weeks turned on the director of the National Bureau of Standards, a physicist named Allen Astin. Astin had replaced the embattled Edward Condon, who had resigned during his investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Condon “cited his low government salary as his reason for leaving,” observed one historian of Condon's career, “but more likely the continual burden of having to respond to [the House Un-American Activities Committee] accusations had grown to outweigh the appeal of public service.”
⁴⁹

Astin conflicted with Secretary Weeks over an event that was interpreted one way by National Bureau of Standards scientists and quite another way by members of the business community. It concerned a report by bureau scientists on battery additives, chemical mixtures that promised to enhance the performance of automobile batteries. The report reviewed
one such additive, called AD-X2, and judged that it had no value.
⁵⁰
To the scientists, the report was a simple scientific conclusion. To the manufacturer of AD-X2, the report was unnecessary government interference in the marketplace. The manufacturer found enough sympathetic ears in Congress to provoke a debate on the report and put the National Bureau of Standards on the defensive. Allen Astin supported his scientists, much to the dismay of his boss, Secretary Weeks. Concluding that Astin was just one more example of “deadwood and poison oak,”
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Weeks asked for his resignation.

Weeks did not anticipate the extent to which the scientific community would fight for its autonomy, its ability to make decisions without external interference. He also did not foresee the scale of political connections that the scientists could rally. The key players were not the scientists in the National Bureau of Standards, who might be expected to resign in protest, but outside researchers with an interest in the agency. The fight was led by the board of visitors, the scientists and industrialists who offered their advice on bureau operations. “The most influential member of the committee, who seemed to have Mr. Weeks' respect, was Mervyn Kelly, then President of Bell Telephone Laboratories,” recalled Astin.
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They also drew support from university presidents, academic scientists, and members of the press, such as
Washington Post
columnist Drew Pearson.
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Faced with a storm of bad publicity, Weeks asked Astin to return “on a temporary basis.”
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Astin used the opportunity to strengthen the hand of bureau scientists. He asked for a full review of the bureau by the National Academy of Sciences. The report, released in the summer of 1953, validated the position of the National Bureau of Standards in the AD-X2 matter, but it concluded that the bureau faced a fundamental conflict between its military research and its civilian duties. It recommended that the bureau return all military-sponsored research to the military agencies. Astin accepted the report and implemented its recommendations. He purged the bureau of all military research, one-third of its budget. The Institute for Numerical Analysis was one of the first units touched by the order. Though the institute appeared to be a civilian laboratory located on a university campus, it was actually financed by money from the air force and the navy. Astin announced that the institute would be closed in June 1954, that its equipment would be given to UCLA, and that its computing staff would be dispersed.
⁵⁵

Anticipating the demise of the Institute for Numerical Analysis, Gertrude Blanch resigned her position at the end of 1953. The computing office at the institute had started to shrink even before Astin announced the closure of the UCLA office. The engineers and researchers who needed computing
services had begun acquiring calculating equipment of their own. The most common computing machines were the IBM 604 multiplying punch and its near relative, the Card-Programmed Calculator. The larger customers had ordered IBM's first electronic computer, the Model 701, which had arrived on the market a year before. Fully six of the first twelve customers for the 701 were companies that had once requested computations from the Institute for Numerical Analysis.
⁵⁶

Blanch could have sought a position with IBM, a job that probably would have taken her back to New York City, but instead she accepted an offer with the mathematics department of the ElectroData Company. ElectroData was located in nearby Pasadena and proclaimed that “mathematicians are the heroes of the new industrial revolution.”
⁵⁷
The firm had been founded by Herbert Hoover and had built electronic instruments during the Second World War. In 1954, it was trying to enter the computer business by building a small machine for engineering applications, the kind of work that was done by the firms that had once patronized the Institute for Numerical Analysis. The company had assembled a talented group of scientists, though none of them belonged to the inner circle of computer designers, the group that could trace their knowledge of computing machines back to the Moore School Lectures of 1946. In addition to Blanch, the office included Clifford Berry, an engineer who had helped John Atanasoff build his computing machine at Iowa State College, and Ted Glaser, a young physicist who was proving to be an exceptional computer scientist even though he had lost his sight as a child.
⁵⁸

The winter of 1954 was a poor time to be a government scientist and an equally inauspicious moment to join a small and inexperienced computer company. The managers of ElectroData were struggling to control the design of the machine, to keep the project on schedule, and to develop a customer base. Shortly after Blanch arrived at the company, the senior managers realized that their company needed computer programmers more than it needed mathematicians, and they replaced the “Mathematics Department” with the “Technical Services Group.”
⁵⁹
After a couple of weeks on the job, Blanch concluded that “the place in Pasadena wouldn't last too long,” but she did not know where she might find another job.
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Most of the old computing groups had been closed, and their leaders had retired. The dean of human computers, L. J. Comrie, had died. R. C. Archibald had resigned from
Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation
.
⁶¹
H. T. Davis was preparing a final volume of mathematics tables, but his numbers had been calculated by his National Youth Administration computers and did not represent contemporary work. Clara Froelich had left Bell Telephone Laboratories, said good-bye to calculation, and departed for an extended vacation in Mexico.
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For Blanch, one of the few benefits of working for ElectroData was the
contact it gave her with air force scientists. The company was a contractor for the air force and worked with many scientists who had known Blanch at the Institute for Numerical Analysis or the Mathematical Tables Project. One of these scientists was Knox Milsaps, the chief mathematician of the air force and a founder of the new Aerospace Research Laboratories at Wright Field in Ohio. During the war, Milsaps had worked with Blanch on several mathematical problems, notably one with an expression called the Mathieu function. In the winter of 1954, he was a regular visitor to the ElectroData offices, as he was planning on purchasing one of the new machines for the aerospace laboratories. As he passed through the building, he would often stop at Blanch's desk, chat about old times, ask about her new work, and inquire, “When are you coming to Wright Field?” At first, she deflected his questions. She was happy in California, and after her appearance before the Department of Commerce Loyalty Board, she was reluctant to expose herself to another security examination. Yet Milsaps was persistent, ElectroData was in financial turmoil, and Blanch recognized that her job was not interesting. “So one night I faced the floor,” she recalled, “and decided to accept the job in Wright Field.”
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While Blanch prepared to move to Ohio, the FBI began one more review of her background. The agents in charge of her case found the results of the earlier investigations and decided that they should reopen each of the charges. In addition to the five issues that had been dismissed by the Loyalty Board, they requested a study of one more concern: “Subject is not known to be married or have ever been married.”
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By this time, the political wars of the early 1950s were starting to wane. The Republicans were more comfortable with power, and the most violent of the anticommunist voices had lost some of their control over the public and their party. The Washington FBI office rejected the request, stating that a new investigation would have a “greater possibility of embarrassment to the Bureau … than [of] attaining any information of value from the subject.”
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They formally closed her file and granted Blanch the full security clearance needed for her work. She moved to Dayton, became head of mathematical research at the laboratory, and “learned to drive on icy streets the same as everybody else.”
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