From farming to mapping the world: Meet Gladys West

Catch a road trip movie from the 70s or 80s and you might see folks juggling with maps or else asking for directions. These days? There’s an app for that. Cars, planes, and even trains all rely on GPS.

Ever wondered where it came from? In part, it came from Gladys West, one of the chief architects of the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Dr. Gladys West is inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame during a ceremony in her honor at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6, 2018. West was among the so-called “Hidden Figures” part of the team who did computing for the U.S. military in the era before electronic systems. The Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame is one of the Air Force’s Space Commands Highest Honors.(Photo by Adrian Cadiz)

West was born in 1930 in Virginia. Coming into the world amid the Great Depression, and as an African-American in a segregated nation, you might not think her work would change the world. But it did.

During her childhood, West spent summers helping on the family farm. When school was in session, it was a three-mile walk, both ways, each day.

West quickly saw her education as her ticket to prosperity. After years of studying, she earned a scholarship to Virginia State College, where she majored in mathematics. Eventually, this led to a job as a programmer at a Virginia naval base, where she was one of four Black employees.

Toiling long hours, West contributed to space exploration and later programmed the IBM 7030 Stretch computer to build an accurate geodetic Earth model. This work laid the foundation for the Global Positioning System that helps the modern world go round.

In 2018, she was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame.

Today, she is 91. She and her husband, Ira, have three children and seven grandchildren. While she pioneered GPS, she still prefers paper maps.