Really Randy

Show maker, writer, builder, lighter, sounder, talker, musicer.

🐙🐬🐳🐕🐈‍⬛🐇🌳🪴🪺🌏🌍🌎🎺🪘🚲🏕️🛠️☮️💚⚛️🚯🚻🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇲🇬🇸🇪🇳🇴🇲🇺

[Really Randy @RandyCromwell]

Golden Marble

Like the golden glass cat’s-eye of old,
I'm really quite stunning, or so I’ve been told.
I would not mean to be quite so bold,
But I’m good to hold as well as behold.

[Dr. M.F. Khan @Dr_TheHistories]

In 1930, rural Virginia, a Black girl born into sharecropping poverty wasn't supposed to leave the tobacco fields.

But Gladys Mae Brown had other plans....

Her hands picked crops. Her mind solved equations no one asked her to solve. Her parents, despite barely scraping by, made a choice that defied every expectation placed on them. They kept her in school.

She became valedictorian at a segregated high school with torn textbooks and broken windows. She earned a scholarship to Virginia State College in an era when being Black, female, and intellectually brilliant meant the world tried to crush you three different ways.

In 1956, she walked through the doors of the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren as the second Black woman they'd ever hired. Four Black employees. Hundreds of white men. Most didn't think she'd survive the week.

They were catastrophically wrong.

Gladys calculated weapons trajectories by hand. Complex differential equations that consumed hours of meticulous work. Her accuracy became legendary. When computers arrived, she didn't resist the future. She learned Fortran. She mastered programming languages. She transformed weeks of calculations into hours.

Then came Seasat in the 1970s. The first satellite studying Earth's oceans from orbit. She became project manager. But her true contribution remained hidden in the mathematics.

For GPS to function, you need Earth's exact shape. Not close. Exact. Earth isn't a smooth sphere. It's an asymmetrical, gravity-distorted, irregular mass of mountains and ocean trenches.

Gladys spent years constructing mathematical models describing every deviation, every curve, every gravitational anomaly of our planet's true form. She analyzed satellite data. She built geoid models. Tedious, invisible, revolutionary work.

That mathematics became the foundation of GPS.

Every navigation app. Every emergency rescue. Every autonomous vehicle. Every precision farming system. Her equations make it possible.

Forty-two years at Dahlgren. Retirement in 1998. GPS fully operational worldwide. Billions of users. Almost nobody knew her name.

She raised three children. Earned her PhD at seventy after surviving a stroke. Lived quietly.

Until 2018, when someone at a sorority event read her biography aloud. The room went silent. The story exploded.

At eighty-eight, Gladys West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. The world finally learned her name.

She mapped the entire planet. Then everyone forgot. Until they remembered.

Gladys West worked alongside her husband Ira West, who was also a mathematician at the Naval Proving Ground. They met at Dahlgren and built both a family and parallel careers in an environment that actively discriminated against them. After retirement, she didn't stop. She earned her PhD from Virginia Tech at age 70, proving that intellectual curiosity doesn't have an expiration date.

The GPS system relies on something called the geoid, a mathematical model of Earth's shape that accounts for gravitational variations. Gladys West's calculations helped create these models by analyzing millions of data points from satellite altimetry. Without accurate geoid models, GPS coordinates would be off by hundreds of meters, making the technology essentially useless.

Her story remained hidden partly because classified military work doesn't generate headlines. Many pioneers of satellite and navigation technology worked in obscurity for national security reasons. The sorority member who recognized her contribution was reading through Alpha Kappa Alpha biographies when she noticed the GPS connection and brought it to public attention.

© Women Stories

#drthehistories

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

How different martial art styles avoid obstacles

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Smooth moves caught on camera

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

The immense effort behind stop-motion is something AI can never truly replicate.

[Crime and PUNishment @MadisonCarly26]

What did the dentist get to celebrate her anniversary at work?
A little plaque.

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

The BBC “spaghetti tree” hoax is one of the most famous April Fools’ pranks, broadcast on 1 April 1957 on Panorama, narrated by Richard Dimbleby

[Crime and PUNishment @MadisonCarly26]

Saw an ad for burial plots... Thought, "this is the last thing I need".

[Lilith Cumswell(™) @Cums_well]

"He was resisting arrest."
"He charged officers!"
"The officers feared for their lives!"
Remember this?
Rodney King was beaten horribly while on the ground after being pulled from his vehicle.
NOTHING HAS FUCKING CHANGED!!

[Wholesome Side of 𝕏 @itsme_urstruly]

Books are so cool because there are NO ADS IN THEM

[Physics In History @PhysInHistory]

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

- Max Planck (1858 - 1947)

[Variety @Variety]

Gil Gerard, the actor who starred as the titular hero in “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” has died after a battle with cancer. He was 82.

"My life has been an amazing journey. The opportunities I’ve had, the people I’ve met and the love I have given and received have made my 82 years on the planet deeply satisfying," Gerard wrote in statement before his death and shared posthumously by his wife. "My journey has taken me from Arkansas to New York to Los Angeles, and finally, to my home in North Georgia with my amazing wife, Janet, of 18 years. It’s been a great ride, but inevitably one that comes to a close as mine has.
Don’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t thrill you or bring you love. See you out somewhere in the cosmos."
https://t.co/9zPjIvokf3

[𝓛 @Elwontmiss]

A man commented on a woman's ig post "you're not even rapeable, you're safe". She saw he was a pilot at American Airlines and wrote an email to the company along with the comment. He got fired immediately and is facing prosecution. Very good

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

This is awesome

[Lilith Cumswell(™) @Cums_well]

Republicans:
"It's not the guns it's a mental health issue."
Same Republicans just cut funding to mental health in schools.

[Really Randy @RandyCromwell]

@Cums_well People should be more sheepish.

[Really Randy @RandyCromwell]

@norton do you have any promo codes? Thx! https://t.co/7mTAPRzNbN via @couponfollow

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

Had no idea this was on earth

[Really Randy @RandyCromwell]

.@CongMikeSimpson @SenatorRisch @MikeCrapo @BrendanCarrFCC @GeoffreyStarks @SimingtonFCC @AMG8697 My local TV and radio stations could disappear without changes to broadcast rules that unfairly favor Big Tech. Modernize the rules to let local stations compete!

[Bob Golen @BobGolen]

The trick to keeping Canadian bacon from curling in the frying pan is to take away their little brooms

[Lilith Cumswell(™) @Cums_well]

During Trumps reign last time, I had 3 US Marshall at my door for a tweet joke I made. So remember HE is in your house now, and HE is not leaving.