Katherine Johnson is a brilliant NASA mathematician who has been working on the space program since its early days, going back to the 1950s. Many of NASA's early missions were only made possible by Johnson's intrepid and unparalleled calculations.

Katherine still lives in Hampton, Virginia, where she will be celebrating her 98th birthday later this month. Let's find out true story her incredible life.

Family atmosphere

Johnson has repeatedly said in interviews that she loved to count as a child. Her father set up an education bonus and insisted that all four children in the family go to college, working overtime to pay for it. Johnson says that this atmosphere in the family was critical to her success. She was always surrounded by people who wanted to learn something. And she also liked to study.

Studies

Katherine graduated high school at 14 and college at 18. Her high school principal planted the first seeds for her future career in space by walking her home after school and showing her the constellations in the sky. Already in college, the teacher, who was a friend of the family and knew the girl's ability in mathematics, invited Catherine to study in her class. She was later mentored by Dr. William Schifflin Claytor, who encouraged her to try becoming a research mathematician. He began teaching the classes he knew Katherine needed to succeed, including one where Katherine was the only student. Throughout her education, the girl was able to achieve success because she liked to ask questions, even when teachers tried to ignore her.

After graduating, Johnson began teaching mathematics and later married and had children. She returned to teaching when her husband fell ill. A few years later he died of cancer, and in 1959 she remarried. But back to science.

Beginning of cooperation with NASA

Johnson began working with NASA in 1963. At that time, this organization was called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, since there was no space program yet. Johnson fell to work at the Langley Research Center in Virginia. It was an aircraft research center and can be called the forerunner of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

At the time, the agency hired talented mathematicians to do the calculations and power the work of more prestigious engineers. Johnson worked mostly by hand, filling out large spreadsheets with complex calculations.
Her first assignment was to process black box data from crashed planes. “We had a mission, and we worked on its implementation. It was very important for us to get the job done right,” she said in a 2011 interview.

The reason for starting work on rockets was her endless curiosity and talent. She was accepted into the men's team to work on research flights on a temporary basis. However, Johnson was so good at it that they decided not to send her back.

By way of exception

When the space program was launched, Johnson had just started working with the guys, and then they had to go through briefings. Katherine also asked permission to go. And although women were usually not allowed to attend such meetings, an exception was made for her sake.

Johnson had some computing experience before joining NASA, so she was prepared to use the technology. At that time, NASA could not fully rely on electronic calculators, in particular, when calculations were needed regarding life and death, when they began to build a space program. Before Johnson was to be trusted, she showed her talent in working with machinery, as well as the accuracy of manually checking data.

Features of work

During World War II, NASA and the rest of the defense industry were forced to hire African Americans, so there were black and white women mathematicians working for the agency. separate group. Johnson says her team was the best.
Male engineers preferred to work with black female mathematicians, as they believed that their abilities were better than those of whites. On the one hand, they were all in college, says Johnson, while few black girls had that opportunity.

Although women with unique mathematical abilities did not receive the same respect as male engineers at the time, this never bothered Johnson. “Girls can do everything that men can do.
But sometimes they show a lot more fantasy than the stronger sex, Johnson said in her 2011 interview. - Men do not pay attention to small details. They are not interested in how you do your job. The main thing is to provide them with the necessary information in time.”
Johnson worked closely with Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, who were extraordinary scientists in their field.

Dorothy Vaughan was a mathematician and head of the Computing Unit for ten years. She later became a programmer. As for Johnson, her work has underpinned many of the most important projects NASA.

space programs

In 1961, based on the work of Johnson, Alan Shepard was able to go into space and became the first American to do so. Johnson calculated the trajectory of his capsule from launch to landing. If she was wrong, at best, NASA would not know where to pick it up.

Already at an early stage, when NASA began planning to launch a capsule into certain place, it was necessary to calculate when to start this mission. Johnson volunteered to make these calculations. She was told where it was to land on Earth and was able to determine where the mission was to begin. Similar calculations were strong point Johnson.

At that time, the Mercury mission was in development, during which John Glen was supposed to be the first person to orbit the Earth. NASA had already started using electronic calculators, but everyone was still suspicious of the new technology. Therefore, Glen insisted that Jones check all the calculations made by the calculator. "If she says the calculations are correct, I will accept them," he told the agency.

Mission "Apollo"

Johnson also used her unusual talent to calculate the moon landing of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. “Everyone was worried about whether the astronauts would be able to get there,” Johnson said in an interview. “And everyone was also concerned about their return.”

There were an incredible number of factors to consider: the rotation of the Earth, the location of the satellite, the time when the astronauts would reach the moon, when they could land on it. All this was very confusing, but possible. The mission went according to plan.

She didn't just make calculations to make sure everything was going according to plan. When things went wrong in the mission, Johnson also intervened. In 1970, Apollo 13, which was sent to the moon, suffered from the explosions of two oxygen tanks.
Johnson was one of the mathematicians who helped figure out a safe route back to Earth. This work became the basis of a system that requires only one observation of a star, matching an astronaut's onboard star chart, to determine an exact location.

Resignation

Johnson retired in 1986, but her huge contribution to the space program has only gained public attention in the past few years. She was the first to recognize that science is a joint venture. "We've always worked as a team, and we never saw it as an individual achievement," she said in an interview.

Last year, President Obama presented Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the most prestigious award available to civilians.

print version

In the history of cinema there is great amount works based on real events and many of them are curtseys about women who changed history.

The director's new film Theda Melfi"Hidden Figures", released on the big screen just the other day, will leave a mark in the hearts of an impressionable and caring public. The movie turned out not to be a grandiose exception, not a masterpiece creation, but inspiring and of high quality.

Before us appears America in 1961, when it was still normal to divide a person by skin color, when a woman was in second place, or even completely in the shade, when Yuri Gagarin flew into space. The plot is based on the need to get ahead of the Russians and launch the spaceship first.

The prototype of the main character is a genius of mathematics Katherine Johnson which was played on the screen Taraji P. Henson(films "Baby", " Misterious story Benjamin Button). The girl got the role of a computational nerd prodigy and a heroine suppressing feelings of feminism. This character is central, she is transferred to the department in which they are engaged in trajectory calculations and other calculations for space flight. Here she shows herself better side under the guidance of the sensitive Al Harrison. Her two friends are the more perky Dorothy Vaughn ( Octavia Spencer known for the film "The Help", for which she received an Oscar, other films: "Fruitvale Station", "James Brown: Way Up") and Mary Jackson ( Janelle Monáe, by the way, shines in the Oscar-winning film "Moonlight", best known as a singer) portrayed on the screen independent women with revolutionary views and fighting for the rights of women.

Despite all the qualities of the heroines, Dorothy is denied promotion, but she practically already manages her department, consisting of black colleagues. And Mary, passionate about becoming an engineer, is waiting for tests ahead. She will fight on the legal fields and defend her right. Gifted girls are excellent mathematicians, but their work and knowledge are noticed only at the end of the film. Throughout the tape, they with dignity withstand pressure and neglect from the “whites” (in the context they are forced to quote - approx. - ed.). And their gift in computational mathematics allows the Americans to achieve their goal. Pleasantly surprised Kirsten Dunst as Vivienne Mitchell. The secondary role did not diminish the talent of the actress at all, and she managed to convincingly show hostility towards African Americans and portray an evil, internally unhappy woman, a NASA employee, who is one step higher on the career ladder.
The director shows the audience thorny path to a career and an enchanting reward in the final for all the humiliation and oppression. The theme of gender and color discrimination passes in the film in passing, fortunately, without taking the main part of the tape's time. The director clearly sets priorities, as if saying that his picture is mainly about brave girls devoted to science. The predictable end in the form of a late recognition of the genius and courage of a black woman does not spoil the overall impression of the picture. After all, the film itself does not claim to be an effect of amazement. The plot flows calmly, smoothly, according to the laws of drama and biography. The tape reaches its peak at the moment of Katherine's outburst of emotions. “There is no toilet for me here. There are no colored toilets in this building or anywhere else on west campus! Our toilet is far away. Did you know this?" she turns to Mr. Harrison. And he found out, and with a few blows in front of everyone, the plate “Toilet for colored people”, and in the end he gave a string of pearls to Catherine (it was not allowed to wear jewelry around the neck, except for pearls), which personifies his human qualities.

However, like many biographical works about discoveries, greatest heroes This film does not go beyond and does not offer anything new. The picture is useful for those who are not familiar with this part of the story, who will learn something new for themselves. However, the tape is presented in the old manner, and the style of narration is not new. The main thing here is the linear development of the plot and life ordinary person. A lot of time is devoted to the development of the plot with Katherine, and, for example, Mary's struggle for the right to study in college with whites is revealed little. This line is limited to a bright episode in the courtroom and a bombastic speech about a discoverer. The story line with Dorothy is also pretty straightforward. For the most part on the screen, she looks like a grumbler, since the character of the character was slightly opened in the finale, when she coped with the computer and did not leave her black colleagues. On the background brilliant minds the main characters "white" personify the stupidity and inability to make correct calculations. Grown men in formal suits sit in the office like a scenery in NASA for the masses. Of the entire team of specialists, Mr. Harrison is perhaps the only person capable of thinking. He is remembered mainly by the manifestation of a certain amount of rebelliousness.
The director dilutes the narrative of the race for space exploration by inserting into the story everyday life heroines, shows their little joys, introduces them to their families. And how without romantic story about the love between the main character Katherine and the officer played by Mahershala Ali(by the way, he received the main award "Oscar" for best role supporting role in the film "Moonlight"). In "Hidden Figures" he did not excel in the game, he got a loving, pleasant young man.

“Hidden Figures” is about specific people following a dream without looking back. In Russian translation, the name of the film takes on a single meaning - an inconspicuous person with courage, bravery and talent. Ted Malfi shot an optimistic and bright picture, not hitting the topic of discrimination, but placing accents on people of any color and gender. Men could have been in their place, and the meaning of the tape would not have changed, but history cannot be changed. The main thing in the drama remains strong man, not broken by circumstances, the discoverer leading to civilization, modern world without patterns. The breakthrough into outer space is parallel and closely concerns the path of development of the race, the denial of pseudo-correct laws.

Regina Akhmadullina

In the 1960s, the first American astronauts Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn went into space. Margo Lee Shetterley's book, "Invisible Numbers: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race," and the movie "Hidden Figures," based on the book, pay tribute to employees whose accomplishments have remained in the shadows to this day. Behind the scenes of high-profile victories, work remained “ human computers who manually performed orbital trajectory calculations at the National Aeronautics and Research Administration outer space(NASA).

In 1935 NASA hired 5 women for the first time as "computers". It was necessary to solve problems and make calculations manually, without the use of calculators or computers, which at that time seemed to be. During the Second World War there was a great demand for aircrafts, at the same time there were not enough men due to the fact that many went to the front. Were needed.

At that time public figure A. Philip Randolph fought to provide jobs for Jews, African Americans, Mexicans, Poles - groups that were discriminated against. In 1941 the US President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 (Executive Order 8802), which prohibited discrimination against employees in the defense industry or on public service based on their skin color, race, religion, national origin(although gender is not specified). And six months later, NASA began hiring African-American women with university degrees.

Human computers were not new at all. In the 19th century, women worked as computers at Harvard University and analyzed images of stars. They made a huge contribution to the history of astronomy - Williamina Fleming participated in the development unified system designations of stars and cataloged 10,000 stars and other objects. Annie Jump Cannon invented spectral classification, which we still use today (from cold to hot bodies: O, B, A, F, G, K, M). Dava Sobel in the book “The Glass Universe” she wrote that these women were in no way inferior to men in mental abilities, while their working conditions were worse.

"Computers" worked in the Laboratory of Aeronautics. Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia. Even though African-American women did the same jobs as white women and men, they were in the segregated West Wing. “These women were meticulous and accurate, and they could not be paid,” said NASA historian Bill Barry. These women often had to retake courses they had already taken in college and were also not considered for promotions at NASA.

But over the years, computers have become engineers, managers, and with the help of their work it has become possible to send John Glenn into orbital spaceflight in 1962.

The Hidden Figures movie is based on real events and tells about the fate of three girls Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan - African-American women who worked as computers in the West Wing of Langley.

Katherine Johnson

(born 1918)

Since childhood, Katherine has shown extraordinary mental capacity She graduated from high school at the age of 14 and graduated from high school at the age of 18. In 1938, she became one of three African American students (and the only woman), which entered State College West Virginia. In 1953, she joined NASA, where she subsequently worked for 33 years. Her first big assignment was doing the calculations for Alan Shepard's historic 1961 flight.

Johnson and her team worked to trace the path of the Freedom 7 in detail from takeoff to landing. It was designed as a ballistic flight - in this it was like a cannon bullet with a capsule rising and falling in a large parabola. Although the flight was considered relatively easy, it was a huge success, and NASA immediately began preparations for America's first orbital mission.

The film mainly focuses on John Glenn's orbital flight, and many of the details, despite the Hollywood script, are historically correct. For example, Glenn did not quite trust computers, and asked Johnson to double-check and confirm the trajectory and entry points: “Let the girl check the numbers. If she says the numbers are okay, I'm ready to fly!”

In 2015, at the age of 97, Katherine received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Mary Jackson

(1921-2005)

Educated in two majors - mathematics and , Mary worked as a teacher, and at that time it was considered a worthy career for many women with higher education. Because most of the women were at home with children or doing low-paid jobs. In 1951, she was accepted into NASA. Responsibilities included extracting relevant data from experiments and flight tests.

A few years later, Mary became an assistant to the senior aeronautical engineer. Casimir Cherniecki who subsequently persuaded her to become an engineer. To qualify, Mary had to take night classes at the segregated Hampton High School. She had to petition the city council to be eligible to study on an equal footing with white students. In 1955, Jackson became the first female NASA engineer.

In addition to doing official duties, Katherine supported her colleagues in the pursuit of career success, because sometimes women lacked self-confidence or needed additional education. According to the biography on NASA's website, Mary has inspired many to get promoted.

Dorothy Vaughan

(1910-2008)

At NASA, Dorothy was a respected mathematician, FORTRAN programmer, and the first African-American executive. Her career began as a mathematics teacher, and in 1943, during World War II, Dorothy joined Langley's laboratory in a temporary position. But thanks to Executive Order 8802 to prohibit discrimination, Dorothy was lucky enough to stay with NASA, as there was a high demand for specialists who could process information. But women of color worked separately from their white counterparts, and white women were the first leaders. After Dorothy became a manager, she evaluated career and merit-based salary increases for their subordinates. Vaughan became an expert in FORTRAN programming, contributed to the launch of the launch vehicle for the Scout satellite, while raising six children.

According to the writer Margo Lee Shetterly, these women were doing a job that not only any African American woman, but in general, no one on this planet had done before them. Shatterly's father worked for NASA, so it was not unusual for her that women made a big contribution to the development of space exploration. To write the book, Margot Lee interviewed Katherine Johnson and other collaborators. They were very surprised by the desire of the writer to tell this story, because they did not think that anyone would be interested. The book and the film inspire how you can more women were not afraid to follow their dreams and remembered: genius has no race, strength has no gender, courage has no boundaries.

On the eve of Gagarin's flight, black women mathematicians Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Hanson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) work at the NASA center in Virginia. Since this is a segregated southern state, the heroines have to endure all sorts of humiliations associated with their skin color. Dorothy is not promoted even though she actually manages the "colored" estimators, Mary cannot attend the refresher courses that take place in the "white" college, and Katherine is forced to run out of need to another building, because in the building where her planning team works flights, no “colored” toilets. Still women serve faithfully common cause. Their achievements begin to be noticed only when Gagarin's flight puts NASA in time trouble and the authorities do not have time to maintain racial discrimination.

Katherine Johnson is the only character in the film who is still alive.

According to the famous dark-skinned comedian Whoopi Goldberg, she was amazed to the core when she saw the girl in the series “ Star Trek» Nichelle Nichols as communications officer on the spacecraft. For the first time in her life, she saw a woman of her own color on screen, doing a prestigious job, and not busying herself in the kitchen or sweeping the floor. Caryn Johnson (real name Goldberg) did not even suspect that by that time one of the leading NASA mathematicians was her compatriot and namesake Katherine Johnson. Instead of glorifying Katherine and her group as role models for new generations of American women of color, the government hushed up their accomplishments. Years passed before the names of these women became widely known, at least in narrow circles of space lovers.

Shot from the film "Hidden Figures"


The film is based on the documentary book by Margot Lee Shetterly. The writer's father was a NASA scientist, and since childhood she knew many of the heroines of her future work.

The second picture of the director of " Saint Vincent " Theodore Melfi was shot to talk about black women mathematicians and pay them a long-deserved tribute. This is not a psychological drama delving into the spiritual intricacies of women of the past, but almost the life of the saints, which admires the talent, pressure and enterprise of the main characters.

Shot from the film "Hidden Figures"


True, the film was shot in a tragicomic vein, and the heroines sometimes look ridiculous. But this absurdity is due to the insane rules that are imposed on the heroines. Let's say Katherine has to trot to the toilet with a bunch of papers, because the trip back and forth takes more than half an hour, and no one will do the work of a woman for her. Dorothy is forced to steal a book on programming from the library, since books from the "white" department are not given to blacks, and there is no necessary manual in the "color" department. So when the film puts the heroines in stupid situations, he mocks not at them, but at racism, the representatives of which are shown with much less sympathy. Katherine's direct boss, played by Jim Parsons, appears petty and nasty, while Kirsten Dunst plays Dorothy's boss as a prim "southern lady" who can express all her contempt for the descendants of her family's slaves with one curve of her lips.

Shot from the film "Hidden Figures"


Luckily, Hanson and Spencer are talented character actresses, and their flair is more than enough to turn the "holy statues" into lively, entertaining women to root for in whatever they do. Monet copes with this task worse, because she is more traditionally beautiful, but her role is less significant than that of her partners. In addition, no movie has yet suffered from a sexy mathematician with intelligent eyes. And, by the way, although Monet is mainly known as a pop-funk performer, she never leaves any doubt that she is in her place in the cinema, where she does not have to sing or dance provocatively.

It is clear that we in Russia do not really care about who calculated the orbits of the first American manned flights and programmed the first American powerful computers. But Hidden Figures is valuable and interesting because it reflects how legal and pervasive racism was in the US just half a century ago. It is impossible to understand current American tensions without such history lessons, and Hidden Figures also portrays Americans in the unaccustomed role of catching up and never catching up (flight to the moon is left out of the narrative). So the tape pretty much amuses our national pride and at the same time tells a positive, sometimes very funny and quite universal story about people who defend their rights not with rallies and idle talk, but with such impeccable work that even their personal enemies by the end of the film reluctantly recognize their contribution. to astronautics. Although the heroines do not need recognition, they know their worth.


  • In addition to producing the film, Pharrell Williams also oversaw the composition of the film's score and the selection of songs for its soundtrack.
  • The film reunites Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner, who previously starred together in Black and White (2014).
  • Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe previously starred together in Moonlight (2016). Both films were nominated for best movie» 89th Academy Awards, ultimately winning Moonlight (2016).
  • There is a scene in the movie in which John Glenn asks Katherine Johnson to double-check all the numbers on his mission, and if she confirms that the numbers are correct, then he will fly. Such a moment was in fact, only Glenn asked for a check of the numbers a few weeks before the launch, and not just before the launch at Cape Canaveral.
  • When Taraji P. Henson was approved for leading role, she went to meet the real Katherine Johnson, who was 98 at the time, to discuss with her the character Henson was to play. From their conversation, Henson found out that Johnson graduated from high school at 14 and college at 18. And despite her advanced age, she was able to maintain an amazing clarity of mind. Subsequently, when Johnson saw the film, she expressed her sincere approval of the way Henson portrayed her, and besides, she was very surprised that anyone would even want to make a film about her life.
  • Katherine Johnson hasn't really experienced any problems with the restrooms personally. This situation was not with Johnson, but with Mary Jackson. She described her outrage at the situation to a colleague, and as a result, she was transferred to the wind tunnel team. Johnson was initially unaware of the whites-only restrooms in the east wing. She simply used the unmarked restrooms, and this went on for many years until complaints began to come in.
  • One of the discriminations Catherine experienced was that her colleagues asked her to use a separate coffee pot. When a table with a coffee pot is shown in the film, the name of coffee is clearly visible - Chock Full o "Nuts. The use of this brand in the context of segregation is historically correct. In 1957, Chock Full o" Nuts became one of the first large companies of New York, which made a black man vice president of the company. The man they hired for the position was Jackie Robinson, a former legendary baseball player who is also famous for being the first black player in Major League Baseball.
  • To create a certain mood in various scenes, work was carried out with color. Everything in the NASA premises was done in cold colors - white, gray, silver, while in Al Harrison's office and in the houses of the main characters, on the contrary, the colors were made warm.
  • The scenes at Dorothy Vaughn's house, where the women play cards and dance, were filmed at a historic location in Atlanta, in the house where the fighters for civil rights- Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King.
  • In the scene in which Paul (Jim Parsons) talks to NASA engineers about the need for very accurate calculations to return an astronaut from orbit, among the engineers is Mark Armstrong, the son of astronaut Neil Armstrong - the first man to walk on the moon during the expedition of the Apollo mission. eleven". Actor Ken Strunk invited Mark Armstrong to make a cameo appearance in the scene.
  • Several control panels in the mission control center were taken from props from the movie Apollo 13 (1995). These same panels have been modified for use in films such as The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Part I (2014) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Part II" (2015).
  • At the 89th Academy Awards, before the announcement of the winner for Best documentary» Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae invited 98-year-old Katherine Johnson to the stage. The whole hall gave her a standing ovation.
  • The characters of Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) and Vivienne Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst) were not based on real people. They are collective images that convey the dismissive attitude towards people with a different skin color, which was typical for part of NASA employees at that time.
  • Katherine Johnson did have children at the time of her marriage to Jim Johnson, only they were already in their teens then.
  • In reality, John Glenn was much older at launch than he is shown in the film. The launch took place in January 1962, when Glenn was almost 41 years old. The actor who played him, Glen Powell, was 27 at the time of filming.
  • This is the second time that Taraji P. Henson and Mahershala Ali have played two lovers. This was first seen in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
  • Screenwriter Allison Schroeder grew up near Cape Canaveral. Her grandparents worked at NASA, and she herself, when she was still a teenager, trained at NASA.
  • Octavia Spencer previously starred with Jim Parsons in episode 5 of season 2 of The Big Bang Theory (2007) (the episode was titled "Euclid's Alternative"). Spencer played an employee of the Department of Motor Transport.
  • Octavia Spencer and Kirsten Dunst have a lot of scenes together in this movie. Both actresses previously starred in Spider-Man (2002), but there they did not have common scenes, and Spencer played only a cameo role.
  • Ted Melfi was one of the contenders to direct Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), but eventually pulled out to direct Hidden Figures (2016).
  • Oprah Winfrey and Viola Davis were considered for the lead roles.
  • This is Kirsten Dunst's most successful US box office project since the Spider-Man franchise.
  • This is the third film by Kevin Costner to deal with the Kennedy administration in one way or another. The first two were John F. Kennedy: Shots in Dallas (1991) and Thirteen Days (2000).
  • This is the third time that Octavia Spencer has starred in a film with one of the actresses from the Spider-Man movie franchise. In The Help (2011), she played with Bryce Dallas Howard and Emma Stone. Both actresses played the role of Gwen Stacy: Howard in Spider-Man 3: The Enemy in Reflection (2007), and Stone in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man: High Voltage (2014) . In Hidden Figures (2016), Spencer played opposite Kirsten Dunst, who played Mary Jane Watson in the original Spider-Man trilogy.

    • Mistakes in the movie

  • When on television they talk about the orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin, the flight time is announced in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). This standard was invented only in 1961, and then it had not yet received the name UTC.
  • In some scenes in Langley, a modern satellite dish is clearly visible on the roof.
  • When a 1957 Chevrolet won't start, Dorothy takes a screwdriver and shorts something on top of the engine, presumably the battery. A screwdriver was indeed used to close the contacts and start the starter, but they were not located at the top of the engine on this car, but on the lower right.
  • While Mary (Janelle Monáe) is watching John Glenn fly, the sign of the Cream ice cream shop can be seen on the screen in the shop window behind her. Such stores appeared only in 2012.
  • In those days, tobacco use was common in engineering offices and meetings. However, this is not shown in the film.
  • A patrolman arrives to escort the women into town in a 1964 Ford Galaxie. However, these events take place in 1961.
  • On the instructions for the IBM 7090 computer, the company logo is inappropriate for that time. So the IBM logo appeared only in 1972.
  • On the cars in the film, you can see the plates of the state of Virginia that do not correspond to that time. On the numbers of this state in 1961, the letters were black and angular, and the number itself usually consisted of 6 digits, separated by a dash in the middle. In the film, the license plates are in blue fonts, which began to be used only in the early 1990s.
  • In a scene at the beginning of the film, Katherine Johnson is at school doing a mental multiplication problem. Then the teacher will check her results on an electronic calculator. Electronic calculators began to be sold only in the mid-1970s.
  • One scene, set in 1961, shows IBM equipment stacked on pallets wrapped in stretch film. Such a film began to be used for these purposes only in the 1970s.
  • In one scene, the characters in the film use an IBM Selectric typewriter, which was first introduced only in July 1961.
  • Several cars in the NASA parking scenes do not change their position despite the fact that weeks and even months pass in the story.
  • In the original version of the film, Paul uses the expression "spot on" several times. However, this expression was not common in the 1960s. A more appropriate term for that time was "right on".
  • Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center footage shows the access road to Launch Complex 39 (LC 39). In fact, the construction of this complex began only in 1962, so neither the road nor the vertical assembly building could have been during the events described in the film.
  • All Sims who wear glasses will notice at certain angles that the lenses take on a light purple tint. This is a sign that there is an anti-reflective coating on the glasses, which in 1961 was not yet applied to the lenses of glasses.
  • A four-door dark blue 1962 Chevrolet can be seen in the NASA parking lot and at the church picnic, but the events of the film in these moments take place in 1961.
  • The phone wire that John Glenn uses is a reinforced, vandal-resistant cable that didn't exist in 1961.
  • In the scenes when Katherine attends the demonstration, posters with the names of both Nixon and Kennedy are visible, although the elections were held in 1960, and Kennedy had already become president.
  • In Al Harrison's office, there are two aircraft models on a shelf, a C-130 and a C-5 Galaxy. The C-130 was already in production at the time, but it did not have a similar livery, and the C-5 Galaxy was only designed in 1964.
  • A black and white 1959 Plymouth appears in some scenes in the film. It has very large rims, low profile tires and disc brakes that are used in modern restomods.
  • In a scene in 1961 in a NASA parking lot, you can see a 1962 Chevrolet Impala, a 1962 Chevrolet Nova, a green 1963 Mercury Comet, and even a Mercedes-Benz 280 from 1968 to 1973.
  • Among the new TVs in the store window, you can see the Muntz model of 1951-1952, which came out 10 years before the events described in the film.
  • In one of the scenes of the film, a man approaches the printer, and at that moment the sound of a dot-matrix printer is heard. However, the frame shows the IBM 716 printer, which sounds completely different.
  • With the exception of Kevin Costner's character, most of the men's haircuts do not correspond to the time in which the events of the film unfold.
  • When Katherine's hands are shown for a few seconds while she is typing the report, you can see wedding ring, however, in the story, she and Jim did not get engaged until a few months after this scene.
  • Punched cards that are prepared for the IBM 7090 computer are not pierced. But when they start uploading, it's already fixed.
  • At a meeting at the Pentagon, Katherine writes down the calculations on the blackboard. At one point, she starts writing the number 530 as 350, notices this and immediately makes changes. In the following shots, when she moves away from the board, all the numbers are correct, but there is no sign of her making corrections.
  • When Katherine finds her daughters fighting in the bedroom, she calms them down. Then they crawl across the beds, and one of the daughters' pajamas changes position when the frame changes - she either sits straight or is shifted to her side.
  • In one scene, when Katherine is talking to her three daughters in bed, the position of their hands changes dramatically as the shot changes.
  • Near the end of the film, when Katherine is talking to Al Harrison in the control room, her necklace is seen alternately being worn over and under her clothes in various shots.
  • On the map of Africa in the main hall, the Republic of Mozambique is marked with a black icon, as a city, not as a country.
  • In one scene, the IBM 7090 computer is said to be capable of 24,000 operations per second. In fact, this computer could perform 100,000 floating point operations per second.
  • When the heroines' car breaks down, Dorothy says the starter is broken. However, with the engine running, a broken starter would not stop the car. Then she says that you just need to bypass the starter, closes something under the hood, after which the engine starts. However, this is not possible. With a faulty starter, the car would have to be pushed to start the engine.
  • The film says that Glenn was supposed to make seven complete orbits, but due to problems with the heat shield, the number of complete revolutions was reduced to three. In reality, only three full revolutions were originally planned. In addition, a change in the flight plan would nullify all preliminary calculations, and the landing zone would also change, but nothing is said about all this in the film.
  • John Glenn's ship is orbiting nose first when it was actually moving heat shield forward.
  • At the beginning of the film they show Soviet rocket, which delivers the dog Laika into space. The Vostok capsule is visible at the top of the rocket. In fact, Laika flew in the Sputnik capsule. The Vostok capsule was used only for manned flights.
  • As John Glenn is being driven to the launch pad, he is escorted by two police cars. A patrol car with a Virginia sign is driving ahead, it's the same car that was in the first scene of the film, but the launch site is in Florida.
  • The scene with the failed launch clearly used footage of the Challenger shuttle explosion.
  • During the flights, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom are shown a global map that tracks their movement. However, none of them moved away from the cape at a distance exceeding 320 kilometers.
  • In scenes that show the IBM 7090 running, the small round lights on the vertical panel do not light up. The flickering of these lights is an indicator that the computer is working.
  • When Alan Shepard is shown flying through space, a small receding Earth is visible in the background. In reality, Shepard was on a suborbital flight, and his spacecraft had never traveled that far from Earth.
  • In the opening scene of the film, when the police arrive by car to investigate the missing vehicle, it is implied that they are arriving in a Virginia state patrol car. However, this state's police cars have never been black and white. They were blue and grey. In addition, the uniforms of the police officers do not match the uniforms of the Virginia police at that time.
  • In one scene, the computer model is referred to as "seventy-ninety". In fact, the IBM 7090 was called "seven-zero-ninety" because it was a transistorized version of the 709.
  • Mahershala Ali's character is a colonel national guard, which means that he served in the army for approximately 15-17 years. Despite this, only his rank and crossed field artillery cannons are marked on his uniform. Also there should be icons with his name and division. Also missing are any qualification badges, including the Combat Infantry Badge and Advanced Training Badge.
  • When John Glenn prepares to fly, he appears in the "white room" without a helmet and asks for an update on the calculations. During the time of the Mercury space program, the astronauts once put on a space suit with a helmet in hangar 14, then the suit was checked for leaks, and after that the astronaut did not take off the helmet and in the "white hall" he had to be in it.
  • During the launch of the ship with John Glenn, the cutoff of the main engine is mentioned, while footage of the disconnection of the starting engines is shown.
  • In one of the scenes, Mary Jackson says that the judge graduated from George Mason University, but this university did not begin its work until 1965. Judging by his accent, the judge is from eastern Virginia and is more likely to have attended educational establishments like the University of Virginia or the College of William and Mary.
  • In the middle of the film, a TV reporter says that this is a significant historical moment for Cape Canaveral and, in the original version of the film, says the phrase "Freedom 7 will be launched into space at an altitude of about 116 miles an hour" ( Spaceship Freedom 7 will rise into space at an altitude of about 116 miles per hour). Obviously, the actor made a reservation and it was only about height, and speed was not meant.
  • During the scene in the church, Colonel Jim Johnson wears a private's cap. Since he is a field officer, his cap should look different, with a gold chinstrap and other distinctive features.
  • When the IBM computer is delivered, it turns out that it won't fit through the door. Then the workers begin to break down the walls, while the computer is standing nearby in the corridor. In fact, no one would break down the walls next to a new computer, since the dust from the plaster would render it unusable.
  • It can be seen from the position of the gear lever that Dorothy is actually standing when she is shown driving her 1957 Chevrolet. And in some shots, when she is driving at full speed, the lever is in the second gear position.
  • In Virginia, cars always had license plates on the front and back. In the film, the heroines have license plates only on the back.
  • A 110V socket can be seen on the back of the IBM 7090 computer. The presence of this outlet suggests that the computer was probably taken from the Computer History Museum, where it was added to power the displays.