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. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. In that role, she took the lead on the software used to govern the flight dynamics of the Apollo spacecraft, which were used for six landing missions between 1969 and 1972. We had to find a way and we did. The on-board flight software captured these alarms with the "never supposed to happen displays" interrupting the astronauts with priority alarm displays. Mutual respect was across the board. 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. Margaret Hamilton was born in 1936 in the United States. In later years, Hamilton made frequent . In The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976), she portrayed Lynde's housekeeper, reprising the Wicked Witch role, as well as introducing Lynde to the rock group Kiss. And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! Hamilton never remarried. Hamilton was concerned with legitimizing software development as an engineering discipline. 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 had three grandchildren, Christopher, Scott, and Margaret. The solution came from a young Margaret who assured the Mission Director that she could safely ignore the two error messages. She was born on August 17, 1936, which makes Margaret Hamilton age be 82 years old as of now. But a software incident almost derailed the landing, as Hamilton recalled in a 2009 interview with MIT. A former schoolteacher, she worked as a character actor in films for seven years before she was offered the role that defined her public image. When she was studying at Earlham College, she met James Hamilton. Design & Development: In 2003, she was given the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for scientific and technical contributions. Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, After graduation she married her first husband, James Cox Hamilton, and . In the early 1970s, she joined the cast of another CBS soap opera, As the World Turns, on which she played Miss Peterson, Simon Gilbey's assistant. [2] Before she turned to acting exclusively, her parents insisted she attend Wheelock College in Boston, which she did, later becoming a kindergarten teacher. For her work during this period, Hamilton has been credited with popularizing the concept of software engineering. It meant that if Aldrin, say, hit a button on the priority display too quickly, he might still get a "normal" response. 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. She subsequently directed and supervised the developments of the Skylab space station mission. In 2019, she was awarded the Intrepid Lifetime Achievement Award. was ranked 99th in the 2005 American Film Institute survey of the most memorable movie quotes. She later attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and practiced acting doing children's theater while a Junior League of Cleveland member. For her work, she was honored with the Presidential Medal. 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. On December 23, 1938, Hamilton suffered a second-degree burn on her face and a third-degree burn on her hand during a second take of her fiery exit from Munchkinland in which the trap door's drop was delayed to eliminate the brief glimpse of it seen in the final edit. For Hamilton, although Apollo 11 was monumental, she relished the challenge of doing her job for it. Among them, there were 6 in which the man stepped on the floor of the Moon. When she reprised her role as the Wicked Witch in a 1976 episode of Sesame Street, "the show's producers were flooded with letters from parents saying it was too frightening for children. 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. And I asked him what part, and he said, 'The Witch,' and I said, 'The Witch?!' 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. We have estimated Later in the decade, she was in a little-known film noir, titled Bungalow 13 (1948), in which she again costarred opposite Cromwell. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2018-2023, All Rights Reserved Super Stars Bio. [11], In Boston, Hamilton initially intended to enroll in graduate study in abstract mathematics at Brandeis University. Margaret Brainard Hamilton (December 9, 1902 May 16, 1985) was an American actress and educator. While studying mathematics and philosophy at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, she met James Hamilton, and they subsequently married. Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust. She subsequently developed Alzheimer's disease and died in her sleep following a heart attack on May 16, 1985 in Salisbury, Connecticut at the age of 82. In later years, Hamilton appeared in films and made frequent cameo appearances on television sitcoms and commercials. We knew that. (Revised December 29, 2004). ", /system/people/detail_images/320_Margaret_Hamilton.jpg, /system/people/list_images/320_Margaret_Hamilton_320.jpg. Searching to find out more about Margaret Hamilton? Margaret H. Hamilton is a computer scientist who was instrumental to NASA's efforts to land humans on the moon in the 1960s and 1970s. She strove to work as much as possible to support herself and her son; she never put herself under contract to any one studio and priced her services at $1,000 ($18,800 with inflation[4]) a week.[5]. Profiled in "American Classic Screen Interviews" (Scarecrow Press). Pres. And it was at the age of 22 that she graduated from Earlham . Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio to Jennie and Walter Hamilton. The award included $37,200, the largest amount awarded to any individual in NASA's history. [25], Her areas of expertise include: systems design and software development, enterprise and process modeling, development paradigm, formal systems modeling languages, system-oriented objects for systems modeling and development, automated life-cycle environments, methods for maximizing software reliability and reuse, domain analysis, correctness by built-in language properties, open-architecture techniques for robust systems, full life-cycle automation, quality assurance, seamless integration, error detection and recovery techniques, human-machine interface systems, operating systems, end-to-end testing techniques, and life-cycle management techniques. "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," she said. Corrections? Margaret had already built her resume with several performances in film before she came to her most memorable and astronomically successful role, Almira Gulch / The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Besides her work in Apollo, she was part of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Semi-Automatic Ground Environment Air Defense System, or SAGE. Margaret Hamilton. MIT's instrumentation lab received the contract for the Apollo guidance and control systems on Aug. 9, 1961, when the United States had accomplished only two spaceflights both with just one crewmember on board, and both in suborbital space. (Image credit: The White House via collectSPACE.com). The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". (Apollo 13 aborted before landing due to an explosion in the command module's service area.). "Kindergarten Lost Margaret Hamilton." Hamilton was a regular parishioner of the Presbyterian church. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science since 2015. UConnToday, 23 April 2013. By 1968, she was in charge of all Command Module software, which was all the software for navigation and lunar landing guidance. Margaret Hamilton Storey (July 31, 1900 - October 18, 1960) was an American museum curator, herpetologist and ichthyologist.She worked for the Stanford University Natural History Museum for over 25 years. [16] A Republican, she supported the campaign of Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election. Four years later, she obtained the Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics at Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana (USA). According to Hamilton, this now-iconic image (at left, above) was taken at MIT in 1969 by a staff photographer for the Instrumentation Laboratory later named the Draper Laboratory and today an independent organization for use in promotion of the labs work on the Apollo project. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). For other people named Margaret Hamilton, see. We had to find a way and we did. "It quickly became clear that the software was not only informing everyone that there was a hardware-related problem, but that the software was compensating for it. She also published six books. 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 was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. '[8], Hamilton's stand-in and stunt double for the Witch, Betty Danko, also suffered an on-set accident on February 11, 1939. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. NY 10036. She appeared, uncredited, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's People Will Talk (1951) as Sarah Pickett. Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton poses for a series of photos with the Apollo guidance software she and her team developed at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. The couple then moved to Boston. However, in By Your Leave (1934), she plays his housekeeper, and in Saratoga (1937), she has a colloquy with Morgan regarding a cosmetic product he invented (with side glances and eye rolls by Morgan as to its effect on her "beauty"). Byla editelkou oddlen softwarovho inenrstv v MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, kter vyvjela letov software pro Program Apollo.V roce 1986 zaloila spolenost Hamilton Technologies, kter sdl ve mst Cambridge ve stt Massachusetts. During one interview, she joked: I was in need of money at the time, I had done about six pictures for MGM at the time, and my agent called. In 1973, Hamilton produced the stage production of An Evening with the Bourgeoisie. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Moore Boeck. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller? Hamilton left MIT in the mid-1970s to work in the private sector. 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. She also gained recognition for her work as an advocate of causes designed to benefit children and animals and retained a lifelong commitment to public education. Danko made the fiery entrance to Munchkinland, not Hamilton. 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. Hamilton and Ray Bolger were cast members in the 1966 fantasy film The Daydreamer, a collection of stories by Hans Christian Andersen. The Opportunity of a Lifetime. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this. [3], Hamilton made her screen debut in the MGM film Another Language (1933) starring Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery. She loved and doted upon children all her life. "The NASA Heritage of Creativity." Mutual respect was across the board. The character is considered to be one of the screen's greatest and most memorable villains of all time. Planetary science is a global profession. She soon transferred, however, to Earlham College in Indiana where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, with a minor in philosophy.

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