| In the Book |
In the Movie |
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There are many people named in the book along with descriptions of their backgrounds that do not appear in the movie. |
The four characters of the book that appear using the same names are Johnson, Vaughan, Jackson and Glenn. The characters portrayed by Costner, Dunst, and Parsons are composites. The character of Karl Zielinski might be based on Kazimierz Czarnecki |
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The book mainly covers the period from 1943 to 1962. There is background on the early lives of the people in the book plus additional info of the period after the Mercury Program. |
The movie is set from 1961 to 1962 with a small part showing Katherine Johnson's early life.
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Katherine Graduates from high school at age 14. There is much detail on her further education in college. |
Katherine is shown as a gifted young girl who skips some grades in school. |
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Eunice Smith was Katherine Johnson's companion and confidante (and carpool) while working for NASA. Nothing about interacting with the police on the road. |
Dorothy Vanghan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson are shown carpooling to work in 1961; the car has stopped running and they are parked on the side of the road. A white police officer stops to check their ID and while initially suspicious is delighted to hear that they are involved in the space program. He escorts them to work after Dorothy gets the car started. Eunice Smith is not in the movie.
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In 1945 there were 25 black women computors supervised by 3 black shift supervisors and two white head computors. (Computor is an obsolete term for a person who computes) Dorothy Vanghan becomes acting head of West Computing in April 1949. Promoted to full section head in 1951. |
Dorothy Vaughan is shown as the acting supervisor of the West (black) computing area in 1961. She is not paid as the real supervisor. |
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About 50 black women worked as computors, mathematicians, engineers or scientists from 1943-1980. |
The only black NASA employees shown are the female computors.
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FDR signed EO 8802 to desegregate the defense industry and EO 9346, the Fair Employment Practices Committee. |
Nothing about FDR's Executive Orders. |
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Melvin Butler hires the first black computors to work at Langley in 1943. He segregates them to comply with Virginia law and custom. |
Nothing shown about the initial hirings. Melvin Butler does not appear.
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The back of the cafeteria was segregated; a small sign on some of the back tables said "colored computors". Miriam Mann had a habit of repeatedly stealing the sign as it offended her.
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The Cafeteria is not shown; the main issue is with the segregated restrooms. Miriam Mann does not appear in the movie.
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In 1944 Dorothy Vanghan moved her children to her apartment in Langley VA. |
Very little on Dorothy Vaughan's personal life.
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Near the end of WWII Dorothy Vanghan was made a supervisor and 1946 a permanent civil service employee. |
Vaughan was not officially promoted until 1962. |
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In 1947 with most of the East (white) computing jobs working directly for engineering groups, the East Computing group was disbanded and all work routed to West (black) computing.
A Bell electronic calculator was purchased that could calculate in a few hours what the computing women could do in a month. |
The East (white) computing group is never shown to be disbanded.
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Dorothy Vanghan becomes acting head of West Computing in April 1949 after Sponsler (a white female supervisor) departs. Promoted to full section head in 1951. |
She was not promoted until 1962.
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While Mary Jackson was working on the East end of Langley in 1953 she had difficulty locating a colored restroom, asked some white ladies for help and was told “how would we know where your restroom is?”
She vented her rage on Kasimierz Czarnecki who then offered her a job with him at the supersonic pressure tunnel. Operation of the wind tunnel was one of her responsibilities. |
This happens to Katherine Johnson (in 1961). When she is chastised by her boss for being gone so often, she loudly berates him in front of the other engineers because she has to walk a long way to find colored restroom to use.
Her boss, Al Harrison removes the “colored” coffee pot from the office and later on removes the colored ladies restroom sign with a sledgehammer. (Shouldn't he have removed the white ladies restroom sign to allow all the women to use it?)
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The Mercury heat shield is actually on the bottom of the spacecraft, not the sides.
Mary Jackson operates the wind tunnel and set up models to be tested as part of her duties soon after reporting for work there.
Kazimierz Czarnecki encourages Mary Jackson to further her education to become an engineer. |
While reporting to a new assignment at a wind tunnel, Mary Jackson nearly gets stuck (high heel stuck in a grate) in the tunnel when they start it up. She observes what the other engineers call parts of the heat shield ripping off from the sides of the Mercury capsule mockup and is able to suggest an improvement. She is asked by Karl Zielinski (A Polish Jew), “if she was a white man, would she want to be an engineer?” She says she’d already be one if she wasn't a black woman, but the local schools don't allow blacks to attend. |
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Mary Jackson was given an assignment by John Becker, the chief of the compressibility division. He challenged her work, she stood her ground; the problem was with Becker's input data. |
This doesn't happen in the movie.
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Two weeks after being hired in 1953, Katherine Johnson is sent to Bldg 1244 to work with engineers along with Erma Tynes. This is done at the request of one of the male engineers. Virginia Tucker, the actual Supervisor got along well with the colored computors. |
She is sent to work in the engineer's office in 1961 at the request of Vivian Mitchel (composite character). She tells Katherine they’ve never had a colored person in that department and not to embarrass her. |
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Katherine Johnson and Erma Tynes had little trouble fitting in with the white male engineers. |
Katherine is treated like a janitor at first and provided a “colored” coffee pot to use. Erma Tynes is not in the movie.
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Katherine is never treated like this by the other engineers. |
When Katherine is assigned to review another engineer's math results, he gives it to her with much of it redacted (blacked out). She holds it up to the light to see what he had blacked out (info on Mercury and Atlas projects) and after checking his work graphs some of it on the large chalkboard in the office. |
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This does not happen in the book. But during the red scares of the early 1950's, a black engineer was fired for being too radical. |
After the engineers see that she gained access to information on Mercury and Atlas, she is sternly questioned in her boss' office about how she got the information; they suggest she might be a Russian spy. She denies it and explains that she simply held the papers up to the light to see what she needed to know.
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After working six months for Henry Pearson, Vanghan demanded that Pearson promote Katherine Johnson or send her back to West computing. Pearson offered Johnson a permanent position in the Maneuver Loads Branch. |
This does not happen. Katherine works in the office of Al Harrison the entire movie. |
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Katherine kept her graduate school math textbooks at her desk for ready reference. |
She does not.
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Katherine's 1st assignment was to help evaluate the crash of a small Piper airplane. This aided in the discovery of vortexes from larger aircraft. |
Her first assignment was to check the numbers of the engineers working in her office. |
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Katherine Johnson never used the colored restrooms at Langley even after she found out they existed in her section. She also brought her lunch to work in a bag like the engineers and avoided the segregated cafeteria. |
She walked a long distance to use the segregated restrooms which kept her out of the office at time leading to friction between her and the boss.
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Katherine's fair skin nearly allowed her to pass as white although she never tried to.
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Taraji P. Henson is much darker than the real Katherine Johnson. |
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This does not happen in the book. |
Dorothy Vaughan is chastised by a white woman for being in the white's section of the library. She is escorted out by a police officer, but not before stealing a book on Fortran programming.
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No details on this in the book. |
Dorothy is show examining the IBM mainframe and at one time making an adjustment to it. |
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In 1956 Mary Jackson was granted a dispensation to attend night classes at Hampton High School. She became an engineer at NASA in 1958. |
Mary Jackson is shown in court in 1961 privately addressing a judge at her hearing. She convinces him that it would be beneficial to him if he was the first to allow a black woman attend classes at a white school. He allows her to attend night classes.
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The West Area Computers Unit (black women) was dissolved on 5 May 1958. The women were sent to work directly with the engineers or found other jobs. |
It was shown as still in operation in 1962. |
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Soon after NASA was created by the Space Act of 1958 Katherine started gently asking why she was excluded from the editorial meetings with the engineers and other supervisors. They eventually let her attend the meetings. |
Katherine is very direct when demanding that the boss allow her to attend the meetings.
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Few details on the meetings Katherine attended and what she did there. |
At the first meeting she attends, Katherine Johnson explains details of why the Mercury capsule needs to have the correct trajectory and shows the others her math on the board. John Glenn is attending and is impressed. |
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The female computors were renamed math aides after NASA was created from NACA. |
Not addressed in the movie.
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In September 1960 Katherine Johnson and Ted Skopinski published their Azimuth Angle report which was used to place a satellite over a selected Earth position. |
Katherine is shown putting her name on a report along with another engineer. The engineer objected as computors never got credit for their work in reports at that time. |
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The book does not show the white supervisors having this kind of friction with the black women in East Area computing. |
The day of Glenn's launch, Vivian sees Dorothy in the ladies room and says she never treated her differently because she's black. Dorothy doesn't believe her.
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After Katherine Johnson finished her Azimuth Angle report in 1959 the numbers were checked by the IBM 704 and later checked by the 7090 for two different orbits, one launched east and the other west. It took her a day and a half; her numbers agreed with the IBM. Three days prior to his scheduled orbit in Friendship 7, John Glenn requested that someone verify the calculations made by the IBM 7090 computer. He requested “the girl”, meaning Katherine Johnson. He did not remember her name. |
John Glenn makes the request for “the girl” to check the numbers just prior to lift-off. |
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There were several problems with Glenn's flight, but this was not one of them. When Glenn was launched into orbit he was scheduled for 4 orbits, but extended to 7 due to the favorable launch. Problem with the attitude control system and a faulty heat shield indication led to the decision to fire the retro rockets after the third orbit; the retro rocket package would be left in place to hold the heat shield on in case it was actually loose. |
There is a problem with Glenn's orbit as the computer numbers don't match Katherine's anymore. She does some calculations to verify which set of numbers is correct.
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Dorothy Vaughan was not involved in the programming for Mercury, but did assist with programming on Mercury-Scout in 1961. |
Mercury-Scout is not shown in the movie. |
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Glenn's landing was off by 40 miles due to an incorrect capsule re-entry weight data entry. |
Katherine claimed Glenn would land within 20 miles of the desired spot in the ocean and he did do so.
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Of the black employees working in research at Langley, only 5 were engineers and 16 titled as mathematicians. Floyd Thompson wrote to James Webb lamenting that “very few Negroes” were applying for science and engineering positions at Langley due to the segregated nature of the surrounding community. |
Not addressed in the movie. |
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Joh Glen is around 40 at take-off |
John Glen is around 25 at take-off
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