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LETTER 02

I AM SO VERY ANXIOUS TO ‘COME HOME’

Betty Trier Berry and Mount Wilson Observatory

21 January 1918

In the early 1900s, decades before the women of Hidden Figures played a pivotal role in the Space Race – a time of heated competition between Cold War rivals the USA and Russia (then the USSR) over space exploration – the Mount Wilson Observatory hired dozens of highly skilled women to do similar work. In return for their invaluable efforts, they were offered very little recognition and a paltry wage. As evidenced by this exchange, despite her Masters degree in mathematics and love of astronomy, Betty Trier Berry could not afford to work as a ‘human computer’. Instead, she went on to become a celebrated attorney and the first woman to work as a public defender in the United States.

THE LETTERS

January 21, 1918

Mrs. Betty Trier Berry

1929 No. Western Avenue,

Los Angeles, California

Dear Mrs. Berry,

We have a position in our Computing Division now vacant that I can offer you at a beginning salary of $825.00 per year, the appointment to take effect on February 1. An annual vacation of one month is granted to the staff, and there is no work on Saturday afternoons.

The amount offered is probably much less than you have been earning, but I am hoping that you will wish to try the work under these conditions. With your interest in astronomy, I am under the impression that you will not regret such an acceptance.

Very sincerely yours,

Superintendent Computing Division

January 23, 1918

My dear Mr. Seares,

Your kind communication of the 21st referring to a vacancy in your Computing Department at a $16 per week wage, reached me today; I trust you will pardon the intrusion on your time if I write you at some length on the matter.

I am dependent on my own efforts for my support; and desirous as I am of entering again the field of astronomical work, I am afraid of the ugly practical questions that would inevitably arise were I to limit my earning capacity to that rather pathetic amount. So far therefore as the position of which you write is concerned, I am regretfully obliged to say that it will be impossible for me to accept it.

It occurs to me, however, that you speak of my “interest in astronomy” as something quite apart from the work of the position you offer me. If I am correct in assuming from this that you have in mind for me, at a later time, some better position at a less mechanical, hence far more interesting, branch of the work, then it would seem that I am being given an opportunity to “try out,” for which I am certainly grateful — but with all the risk of non-success resting upon me. As I say, I am scarcely in a position to assume this risk, and a salary which actually supports me during the probationary period would be obviously quite essential before I dared make a radical change of profession.

I am so very anxious to “come home” to the work I love and so confident that I can be of actual assistance to you in it, that I still venture to hope for an opportunity to join your staff.

Respectfully yours,

Betty T. Berry

* * *

January 30, 1918

Dear Mrs. Berry:

I am afraid that under existing conditions we can do nothing more than repeat the offer of my former letter; but from your reply I appreciate that that would be useless. I am sorry, for I had hoped that we might have you with us.

Very sincerely