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Comment by foldr

3 hours ago

That's already in the comment that I linked to. There are records of her contributing to the codebase as early as 1966, and she's cced in the minutes of a senior management meeting in 1967, so the claim in the tweet that she was hired for an entry-level role in 1968 is clearly false. As is the claim that "her name does not appear [on the command module software] until 1969".

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foldr

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groundzeros2015  3 hours ago

Correction accepted. She was hired earlier than the tweet said. The outstanding information is that she became the manager in the last 3 months before the event. In other words, the vast majority of development did not occur under her “lead”. The comment you’re holding up also acknowledges this overstatement.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think she still has a pretty cool job and did cool things. Why do we need to exaggerate?

  • foldr  2 hours ago

    >The outstanding information is that she became the manager in the last 3 months before the event

    No, this is not outstanding. The comment I linked to already pointed out that Hamilton is shown as the head of CSM programming in the following org chart dating 9/30/68. Apollo 11 launched July 1969.

    https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/ApolloOrg-Group-23B...

    That org chart of course gives the latest possible date of her appointment. The general consensus appears to be that she was appointed to this position in late 1967 (see footnote 102 of https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/Birth%20of%20Softwa...) And we know from the source code that her overall involvement in the project dates to before 1967.

    As for overstatements and exaggerations: by all means say what you like about Margaret Hamilton if it's true and you've checked that it's true. However, the claims that you keep repeating from the tweet aren't true, which is why the comment containing it got flagged. If you want to post a considered comment about how some aspects of Hamilton's role have been exaggerated, then go do that, rather than flogging the dead horse of this trashy tweet.