The Word 'Computer' Is Four Centuries Old

Richard Braithwait's 1613 book The Yong Mans Gleanings contains the word 'computer' — making it the earliest known printed use of the term. He meant a person: someone whose job was to perform arithmetic, often for navigation, astronomy, or engineering. The word sat quietly in that meaning for over three centuries.

Human computers were not a curiosity. They were an industry. During the 18th century, the French mathematician Gaspard de Prony organized a team of nearly 90 human computers to produce logarithm tables — working in parallel, each responsible for a narrow range of calculations, the results assembled into volumes that ran to 17 unpublished manuscript books. Charles Babbage read about de Prony's system in 1819 and it directly inspired his idea for a mechanical calculating engine.

At NASA and its predecessor NACA, 'computers' were a job title carried by hundreds of women through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson held that title before the word shifted under their feet. By the time Johnson was checking John Glenn's orbital calculations in 1962, the word had already migrated to machines — but NASA still sent the trajectory to her, the human computer, for verification.

The shift in meaning is documented in engineering manuals and help-wanted ads from the late 1940s. 'Electronic computer' first needed the modifier 'electronic' to distinguish it from the person. Within a generation, the modifier was redundant.