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Speaker: Imagine the year is
nineteen sixty-five.

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You are building a machine to
fly human beings to the moon.

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It has to survive the violence
of a rocket launch.

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It has to survive the freezing,
radiation-soaked void of space.

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And it has to fit inside a
small spacecraft in an era when

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computers need to live inside
large rooms.

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How do you guarantee the code
will survive?

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You don't type it.

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You weave it.

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I'm Daina Bouquin.

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This is Found in the Machine.

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MIT.

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1953.

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A laboratory bench.

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Bright overhead light.

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The smell of solder and warm
metal.

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A black lab technician named
Hilda G.

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Carpenter sits down with a
spool of fine wire and a tray of

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tiny magnetic rings and begins
to build something that has

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never existed before.

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The rings are smaller than
shirt buttons.

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Smaller really than most things
you'd touch in a day.

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Each one is a ferrite core, a
tiny donut shape that can hold a

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charge or not hold a charge.

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That can mean one or mean zero.

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She picks up a wire.

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She threads it through the
center of a ring.

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That is a one.

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She routes the wire around the
outside of a ring, bypassing it

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entirely.

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That is a zero.

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One, zero, one, zero.

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She does this again and again
for hours, for days, weeks.

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When she is done, software
exists inside hardware.

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Information is not stored on a
spinning disk or punched into a

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card.

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It is woven into a physical
object.

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A plane of magnetic-core
memory.

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The first one ever assembled.

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It becomes the standard form of
computer memory for the next 20

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years.

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Every computer that runs on
magnetic core memory for two

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decades runs on a foundation
that was physically laid by

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Hilda Carpenter's hands.

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There is a photograph of her in
a technical journal from 1956.

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Her hands, the rings, the wire.

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The men who worked alongside
her remember her efficiency, her

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precision, the particular
stillness she brought to work

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that required absolute
stillness.

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Decades later, many of them
could no longer remember her

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last name.

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Now back to 1965.

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Back to the rooms in
Massachusetts where the Apollo

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software is being made.

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The moon-bound computer's
memory is made of ferrite cores.

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The same tiny donut-shaped
rings held the carpenter once

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threaded by hand.

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If a wire passes directly
through the center of a core,

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the computer reads it as one.

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If the wire goes around the
outside, the computer reads it

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as a zero.

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One cubic foot holds 72
kilobytes of data, 18 times more

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dense than standard magnetic
core memory.

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And it is permanent by design.

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The code cannot be erased.

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Not by a power failure, not by
a hard landing in the silent

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dust of the moon.

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Not by anything short of
physical destruction.

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The engineers call it core rope
memory.

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The code is literally hardwired
in.

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And someone has to do the
weaving.

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The ferrite cores are
microscopic.

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Workers have to peer through
magnifying glasses just to see

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what they are doing.

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The contractor Raytheon
realizes they do not need

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engineers.

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They need people with steady
hands and extreme precision, and

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the patience to thread a needle
through a space that is barely

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there.

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They hire women.

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Skilled women from the New
England textile industry.

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Former employees of the Waltham
Watch Company.

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Women who have spent years
fitting tiny springs and gears

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into spaces smaller than a
thumbnail.

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Picture them at long desks in
white smocks under bright task

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lamps.

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Their backs curved over the
work.

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Hour after hour, season after
season, a hollow wire-filled

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needle passing back and forth
through a matrix of tiny

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eyelets, through the core around
the core.

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One, zero, one, zero.

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The weaving of a single module
takes about eight weeks.

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It costs fifteen thousand
dollars.

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If the code needs to change
even by a single bit, the work

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has to stop and begin again.

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The program has to be frozen
months in advance, committed to

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wire and ring in the particular
steadiness of human hand.

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Each core has 192 wires passing
through it.

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A single mistake in the entire
module is flawed, useless.

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NASA inspectors hover.

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Federal agents hover.

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There are supervisors they call
the rope mothers.

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The men and women who oversee
all of it, who are responsible

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in the end for what gets woven,
for what goes up.

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Most of them were actually men.

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The engineers have a name for
the whole operation.

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They call it the LOL method.

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The work that will take human
beings to the moon.

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A thousand miles away in
Shiprock, New Mexico, something

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similar is happening.

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Unemployment on the Navajo
Reservation is hovering around

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40%.

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For years, tribal leadership
has been trying to attract

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outside investment.

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In 1964, tribal chairman
Raymond Nakai opens the

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reservation to outside
businesses.

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Tax breaks, subsidized
construction.

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A workforce with almost no
other options.

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Fairchild Semiconductor hears
about it.

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They come to Shiprock.

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They build a plant.

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And they train Navajo women in
the assembly of integrated

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circuits.

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Components also smaller than a
fingernail.

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Made of silicon and metal,
requiring electrical connections

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placed with microscopic
precision.

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The women bend over their
stations for hours, peering

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through microscopes.

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They place components onto
chips with tweezers.

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They solder connections you
could not see with the naked eye

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if you tried.

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Their backs hurt. Their necks
hurt.

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They do not stop.

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At its peak, the plant employs
more than a thousand workers.

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Most of them are Navajo women.

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To celebrate the dedication of
the plant, Fairchild produces a

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brochure.

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First page, a large photograph
of a Navajo rug.

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Geometric.

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Brown and black and white.

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Beautiful.

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Next page, a photograph of an
integrated circuit.

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Also geometric.

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Also intricate.

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Then photographs of women at
looms.

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Women at microscopes.

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The brochure says, quote, the
blending of innate Navajo skill

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and semiconductor's precision
assembly techniques has made the

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shiprock plant one of
Fairchild's best facilities.

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"Innate".

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As in born with.

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Natural.

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Not learned, not earned, not
transmitted across generations

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through years of patient
instruction.

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Just present.

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Like eye color.

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Here is what innate erases.

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Navajo weaving is one of the
most sophisticated textile

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traditions in human history.

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A master weaver has spent years
learning from her mother and

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her grandmother.

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The patterns encode specific
knowledge, cosmology, clan

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histories, ceremonial meaning,
geometric systems developed and

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refined across centuries.

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A Navajo rug is not decoration.

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It is a record.

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It is argument and memory and
identity woven into wool.

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Contemporary Navajo weaver D.

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Y.

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Begay gave an interview in
2017.

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She said, "I paint with my yarn
to tell my story about where I

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come from." She shared that she
teaches her nieces not to swear

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in front of their looms.

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This is knowledge that is
taught, passed from person to

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person across generations.

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Building bleeding edge
microchips is also something you

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have to learn.

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In 1975, NASA published a
report summarizing the Apollo

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missions.

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It spoke at length about the
flawless performance of the

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computer software, the
adaptability, the precision, the

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extraordinary reliability of a
system that had to work

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perfectly the first time, with
human lives depending on it.

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The report did not mention the
women at Raytheon.

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It did not mention the women at
Fairchild Semiconductor.

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Not one name, not one line.

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Researchers trying to piece
this history together now face a

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simple fact.

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Nearly every woman who could
tell these stories firsthand is

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likely gone.

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The accounts of the engineers
were carefully preserved.

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No one collected the oral
histories of the weavers.

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We don't know where these women
were as men landed on the moon.

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Whether they sat in front of a
television and recognized, in

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the thing happening on the
screen, the work of their own

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hands.

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No one thought the question was
worth asking.

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But their code is still up
there sitting in the

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dust. I'm Daina Bouquin. This is Found in the Machine.