margaret hamilton biography

This overloaded the central processing unit during the landing, but fortunately, the software recovered in the heated moments before Apollo 11 touched down. She was severely burned during the "Surrender Dorothy!" In those years, there were no programming languages like at the end of the 20th century. 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.. A former schoolteacher, she worked as a character actress in films for seven years before she was offered the role that defined her public image. [17], It was her efforts on this project that made her a candidate for the position at NASA as the lead developer for Apollo flight software. She appeared, uncredited, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's People Will Talk (1951) as Sarah Pickett. Hamilton played two credited roles in the famous film: Almira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West. Early life [ edit] This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-Hamilton-American-computer-scientist, Space.com - Margaret H. Hamilton: Apollo Computer Programmer, Wired - Her Code Got Humans on the Moon - And Invented Software Itself, Margaret Hamilton - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Margaret Hamilton - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 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. It does not store any personal data. [7][9] She cites Florence Long, the head of the math department at Earlham, as helping with her desire to pursue abstract mathematics and become a mathematics professor. By Maia Weinstock | MIT News Office On April 28, 2017, she received the Computer History Museum Fellow Award, which honors exceptional men and women whose computing ideas have changed the world. [36], Hamilton's priority alarm displays interrupted the astronauts' normal displays to warn them that there was an emergency "giving the astronauts a go/no go decision (to land or not to land)". [Related: Apollo Coder and 'Apollo 13' Actor Receive Presidential Medals of Freedom]. City Without Men. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Required fields are marked *. 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. Her father, Thomas Storey, was the founder of the Stanford University School of Health. 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. At MIT she began programming software to predict the weather and did postgraduate work in meteorology. [3], Hamilton made her screen debut in the MGM film Another Language (1933) starring Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. She played Morticia Addams' mother, Hester Frump, in three episodes of The Addams Family. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 1958. Four years later, she obtained the Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana (USA). These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. She did a stint as a What's My Line? In addition to requiring a deep understanding of computers, it was not easy to write just over 400,000 lines of code that were inserted into the operating system of the lunar module in the Apollo missions. She led a team that was tasked with developing the software for the guidance and control systems of the in-flight command and lunar modules of the Apollo missions. And there's always a funny reaction, like 'Ye gods, they wish they hadn't asked.' President Barack Obama presents Apollo code developer Margaret Hamilton (at left) and "Apollo 13" actor Tom Hanks (right) with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Nov. 22, 2016. (Image credit: The White House via collectSPACE.com). It turned out that the astronaut checklist, which governed the actions the crew had to do before landing, had the crew set the rendezvous radar hardware switch in the wrong position. As the alarms went off and priority displays replaced normal ones, the actual switchover to new programmes behind the screens was happening "a step slower" than it would today. They married in the late 1950s, after she graduated in mathematics. A few years later, they were reunited on Broadway for the short-lived musical Come Summer. Searching to find out more about Margaret Hamilton? She later attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and practiced acting doing children's theater while a Junior League of Cleveland member. 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. 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. Three minutes before the lunar lander reached the Moon's surface, several computer alarms were triggered. was ranked 99th in the 2005 American Film Institute survey of the most memorable movie quotes. After graduating in 1958, she taught high-school mathematics for a short time. By some accounts, the astronauts had inadvertently left the rendezvous radar switch on, causing these alarms to be triggered (the claim that the radar was left on inadvertently by the astronauts is disputed by Robert Wills with the National Museum of Computing[29]). marriedcelebrity; April 19, 2019; Celebrity Gossip; Born as Margaret Heafield, she is an American system engineer, computer scientist and a woman entrepreneur as well. "The award included the largest financial award that NASA had ever presented to any individual up to that point. 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. In 1939, Hamilton played the role of the Wicked Witch of the West, opposite Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, creating not only her most famous role, but also one of the screen's most memorable villains. The character is considered to be one of the screen's greatest and most memorable villains of all time. While a decision was made in the moment to let the astronauts land, Hamilton pointed out that a fault analysis was done to see where the error was made. Hamilton and Ray Bolger were cast members in the 1966 fantasy film The Daydreamer, a collection of stories by Hans Christian Andersen. 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.. Soon after, Neil Armstrong radioed the expected message to Houston: The Eagle has landed, The Eagle has landed. Check out Margaret Hamilton's Bio Now She soon transferred, however, to Earlham College in Indiana where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, with a minor in philosophy. According to Wired's Karen Tegan Padir: "She, along with that other early programming pioneer, COBOL inventor Grace Hopper, also deserve tremendous credit for helping to open the door for more women to enter and succeed in STEM fields like software. [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. Hamilton has a diverse background, including an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Earlham College in Indiana, and postgraduate work in meteorology at MIT. Her husband is Paul Boynton Meserve (13 June1931 - 20 May1938)( divorced)( 1 child). 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. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Her Gramercy Park neighbor Sybil Daneman reported that Hamilton loved children but they were often afraid to meet her because of her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. [59] Over time the term "software engineering" gained the same respect as any other technical discipline. 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 . ..and your little dog, too!" The woman behind of cinema's most iconic villains, Cleveland-born Margaret . View popular celebrities life details, birth signs and real ages. Between 1969 and 1972, the Apollo program carried out 22 missions: 19 with total success, 2 with partial success and 1 with failure. A Slight Case of Murder. Among them, there were 6 in which the man stepped on the floor of the Moon. Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Jennie (Adams) and Walter Hamilton. In reality, she cared deeply about children, frequently giving to charitable organizations. [16] Hamilton also served as Director of the Software Engineering Division. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Margaret Hamilton's net worth American software engineer and businesswoman, American computer programmer, businessman, and philanthropist. Margaret Hamilton Biography, Facts & Life Story. [42][43][44] It was successfully used in numerous government programs[45][46] including a project to formalize and implement C-IDEF, an automated version of IDEF, a modeling language developed by the U.S. Air Force in the Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) project. [17], Hamilton's early experience as a teacher fueled a lifelong interest in educational issues. During the 1960s and 1970s, Hamilton appeared regularly on television. In 2009, Margaret Hamilton and fellow MIT software engineers described what is was like to contribute to the Apollo missions 40 years after the famous Apollo 11 landing in the Moon's Sea of Tranquility in July 1969. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. She notably wrote software for a program to identify enemy aircraft. Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Margaret Hamiltons income source is mostly from being a successful Actress. Guest in the House. Margaret Elaine Hamilton (born Heafield on August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. This brilliant mathematician, systems engineer, and computational scientist, was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. It was her code that enabled the human race to travel to the moon and back. 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. Later in the decade, she was in a little-known film noir, titled Bungalow 13 (1948), in which she again costarred opposite Cromwell. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Half a century ago, MIT played a critical role in the development of the flight software for NASAs Apollo program, which landed humans on the Moon for the first time in 1969. "All of a sudden, the normal mission sequences were interrupted by priority displays of 1201 and 1202 alarms, giving the astronauts a go/no-go decision (to land or not to land)," she added. She later attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and practiced acting doing children's theater while a Junior League of Cleveland member. As an adult, she worked on NASA's Apollo program, creating computer programs to guide spacecraft to and from the moon. In 1965 Margaret was named responsible for the development of the flight software for the computers that would go on board the Apollo spacecraft. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. In one of the critical moments of the Apollo 11 mission, the Apollo Guidance Computer, together with the on-board flight software, averted an abort of the landing on the Moon. And sometimes when I go to schools, if we're in an auditorium, I'll do it. In this famous MIT lab, her team developed the navigation software for the Apollo Space Program. , money, salary, income, and assets. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.. Dedication and commitment were a given. She appeared in The Phil Silvers Show episode S2E20 Bilko Enters Politics (05 February 1957). For Hamilton, although Apollo 11 was monumental, she relished the challenge of doing her job for it. Not because of his acceptance of the new 'term' per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right. [22][16] Another part of her team designed and developed the systems software. Margaret Hamilton is an American software engineer and computer scientist best known for leading the team responsible for creating the software for the Apollo moon missions and Skylab space station. With only minutes to spare, the decision was made to go for the landing.". On August 17, 1936, Margaret Hamilton (ne Heafield) was born to Kenneth Heafield and Ruth Esther Heafield in Paoli, Indiana. [12] She developed software for predicting weather, programming on the LGP-30 and the PDP-1 computers at Marvin Minsky's Project MAC. Hamilton's plain looks helped to bring steady work as a character actress. [2] Before she turned to acting exclusively, her parents insisted she attend Wheelock College in Boston, which she did, later becoming a kindergarten teacher. [14] The SAGE Project was an extension of Project Whirlwind, started by MIT to create a computer system that could predict weather systems and track their movements using simulators. Miss Hamilton Sings 1840 Song at Play House", "Wicked Witch of the West not always a fright sight", "Wizard of Oz 'witch' loved her Maine island", "Actress Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West", Margaret Hamilton correspondence and ephemera, 1944-1979, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Margaret_Hamilton_(actress)&oldid=1138589927, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2022, Vague or ambiguous geographic scope from March 2014, Internet Broadway Database person ID same as Wikidata, Internet Off-Broadway Database person ID same as Wikidata, Turner Classic Movies person ID different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Epiisode: "An Eye for an Eye" (S 2:Ep 35), Episode: "Bilko Enters Politics" (S 2:Ep 20), This page was last edited on 10 February 2023, at 13:49. In 1986 Margaret founded the company Hamilton Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For her work during this period, Hamilton has been credited with popularizing the concept of software engineering. Hamilton had to recuperate in a hospital and at home for six weeks after the accident before returning to the set to complete her work on the film and refused to have anything further to do with fire for the rest of the filming. So I was assigned this program and I actually got it to work. Played Aunt Eva on the radio series Ethel and Albert in the 1940s and 1950s . It is possible to find relevant details of the biography of this extraordinary pioneer on many websites. Hamilton left MIT in the mid-1970s to work in the private sector. The picture made a terrible impression of some kind on them, sometimes a ghastly impression, but most of them got over it, I guess because when I talk like the Witch, and when I laugh, there is a hesitation and then they clap. Apollo 9 tested out the lunar module and command module together in Earth orbit for the first time, and then the two spacecraft were tested again in lunar orbit for Apollo 10. Play Girl. Contrary to her character, one of the top villains in movie . 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. five.[28]. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers. ], She married Paul Boynton Meserve on June 13, 1931, and made her debut on the New York City stage the following year. Would spoof her famous role of The Wicked Witch of The West in a 1976 Paul Lynde Halloween Special for television. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. [14] On October 30, 1975, she guest-starred on the radio revival series CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Discover Margaret Hamilton's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. MIT Museum: Margaret Hamilton Apollo Photos. Principal Investigator, Magnetometer Instrument, Cassini Mission, This site is maintained by the Planetary Science Communications team at. Hamilton made her debut as a "professional entertainer" on December 9, 1929, in a "program of 'heart rending songs'" in the Charles S. Brooks Theater at the Cleveland Play House. CAPE ISLAND Tour boat operators sometimes entertained their passengers by referring to Cape Island as "Witch's Island." That's because the primary resident there, during summers from 1961 to 1985, was Margaret Hamilton, the actor who played the Wicked Witch of the West and Elmira Gulch in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.. She later attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and practiced acting doing children's theater while a Junior League of Cleveland member. A century earlier, she had a worthy British predecessor named Ada Lovelace. Mutual respect was across the board. I will return to work on one condition no more fireworks!" [18] In 1979, she was a guest speaker at a University of Connecticut children's literature class. It then sent out an alarm, which meant to the astronaut, 'I'm overloaded with more tasks than I should be doing at this time and I'm going to keep only the more important tasks'; i.e., the ones needed for landing Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. The award included $37,200, the largest amount awarded to any individual in NASA's history. She was born on August 17, 1936, which makes Margaret Hamilton age be 82 years old as of now. Zack, Suzanne. This system played a crucial role just before the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. Houston! This page was last edited on 26 February 2023, at 16:40. Credit: Deansfa Marriage and family of Margaret Hamilton We have estimated When I was the beginner they gave it to me as well. [4] They divorced in 1967 and Margaret married Dan Lickly two years later.[80][82]. (Revised December 29, 2004). The pipe exploded on the third take of the scene. "Deeply Integrated Guidance Navigation Unit (DI-GNU) Common Software Architecture Principles". Her other mid-1970s stage productions, as the producer, were The Three Sisters and House Party.[where? [2010]. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! Hamilton was initially hired as a programmer for this process but moved on into systems design. In recent years, a striking photo of Hamilton and her teams Apollo code has made the rounds on social media and in articles detailing her key contributions to Apollo 11's success. She knew everything about these vital programs. 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. 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.[1]. Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, [20][41] They created a product called USE.IT, based on the HOS methodology they developed at MIT. [66], She met her first husband, James Cox Hamilton,[80] in the mid-1950s while attending college. In Wired magazine, she said in 2015 "I enjoyed school, but there was something about maths that I loved more than anything". Only co-star Frank Morgan played more roles (five) in the film. Your email address will not be published. [62] Writing in Wired, Robert McMillan noted: "At MIT she assisted in the creation of the core principles in computer programming as she worked with her colleagues in writing code for the world's first portable computer". [27] Hamilton had prepared for just this situation years before: There was one other failsafe that Hamilton likes to remember. Paul Boynton Meserve (13 June1931 - 20 May1938)( divorced)( 1 child). Her "priority display" innovation had created a knock-on risk that astronaut and computer would slip out of synch just when it mattered most. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.

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