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There was no coloured restroom, so she used the white one. A few years back, when the bus taking her to her first teaching job in marion, virginia, had crossed the state line from west virginia, all the blacks had been told to get off and take taxis. She refused until she was asked nicely. But it could be unwise to push a white man too far. Nonetheless, this engineer's calculation was wrong. If she did not ask the question, an aircraft might not fly, or might fly and crash.
那里沒有有色人種的廁所，所以凱瑟琳就用白色人種的廁所。幾年前，她乘坐公車去弗吉尼亞馬里恩參加第一份教學工作。在車從西維吉尼亞越過州界后，所有黑人都被告知下車并乘坐出租車。凱瑟琳拒絕了，直到有人友好地要求她下車。但把白人逼得太緊可能是不明智的。然而，這位工程師的計算是錯誤的。如果凱瑟琳沒有問這個問題，飛機可能不會飛，或者可能會飛然后墜毀。
So, very carefully, she asked it. Was it possible that he could have made a mistake? He did not admit it but, by turning the colour of a cough drop, he ceded the point. She asked more such questions, and they got her noticed. As the weeks passed, the men "forgot" To return her to the pool. Her incessant "why?" And "how?" Made their work sharper. It also challenged them. Why were their calculations of aerodynamic forces so often out? Because they were maths graduates who had forgotten their geometry, whereas she had not; her high-school brilliance at maths had led to special classes on analytic geometry in which she, at 13, had been the only pupil.
于是，她非常小心地問了這個問題。他可能犯了一個錯誤嗎？他沒有承認，但他臉色變了，放棄了觀點。凱瑟琳問了更多這樣的問題，他們注意到了她。幾個星期過去了，男人們“忘記”把她送回計算部門。凱瑟琳不斷的“為什么？”和“如何？”使他們的工作更出色。這也對他們提出了挑戰。為什么他們對空氣動力的計算經常出錯？因為他們是數學畢業生，忘記了幾何知識，而她沒有；高中時，凱瑟琳在數學方面的才華導致了解析幾何的特殊課程的產生，13歲的她是唯一的學生。
Why was she not allowed to get her name on a flight-trajectory report when she had done most of the work, filling her data sheets with figures for days? Because women didn't. That was no answer, so she got her name on the report, the first woman to be so credited. Why was she not allowed into the engineers' lectures on orbital mechanics and rocket propulsion? Because "the girls don't go". Why? Did she not read Aviation Week, like them? She soon became the first woman there.
為什么她在已經完成了大部分工作，在數據表上填滿了幾天的數據后，不被允許在飛行軌跡報告上留下自己的名字？因為女人不可以。這不是答案，所以凱瑟琳的名字出現在報告上，成為第一位被如此信任的女性。為什么不讓她參加工程師們關于軌道力學和火箭推進的講座？因為“女孩子不能去”。為什么？她不像他們那樣讀《航空周刊》嗎？她很快成為那里的第一位女性。
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