Here are 17 drawings David Woodroffe created for my book Travel Records Inventions Pioneers Success.

Hidden Figures: The story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race is the true story of how 3 black African-American (A-A) women helped NASA win the Space Race to the Moon. It was adapted as a biographical film of the same name and released in 2016 . It is a film and not a documentary. It looked at the lives of three black (A-A) women who made major contributions to the orbital mission of the moon by John Glenn during the space race. Wonderful, feel-good drama about the black female engineers and mathematicians who worked behind the scenes at a segregated NASA during the tense and ground breaking 1960s space race. Daily Mail- weekend Segregation was made obvious. Jim Crow laws meant A-A women had to have separate dining room and bathroom facilities Katherine’s boss eventually became curious about her ‘absences’ - eventually he ’ ceremonially’ pulled down the ‘Whites only’ sign. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1958 became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). All three ladies started work at NACA, Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Katherine Johnson (1918-2020), A-A, started to work for NACA in 1953. She was a human calculator - she was simply brilliant at mathematics. Her mental maths calculations were phenomenal. The new IBM computers had been programed with the orbital equations to control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, but were prone to errors! Before his flight, as part of the preflight checklist,Glenn said 'Get that girl (Katherine 0 If she says they’re good then I’m ready to go. He wanted human confirmation that the figures were correct. Katherine was handed the data. She confirmed the calculations by running the numbers through by hand on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. Numbers confirmed Glenn had a successful mission, Dorothy Vaughan (1910-2008), A-A ,started work at NACA in 1943. She was a mathematician and human calculator. She eventually became the first African=American to supervise a group of A-A staff at NASA’s Research Center in Hampton. She was in charge of the West Area Computers. She prepared for the the introduction of the IBM machine computers by teaching first herself and then her staff the programming language of Fortran. Mary Jackson (nee Winston)(1921-2005), A-A, was a mathematician and aerospace engineer. She started as a human computer at N A C A in 1951. Kazimierz Czarnecki, her boss, encouraged her to qualify as an engineer but she needed a degree. To do this she had to attend a night program at an all white school- Hampton High. After completing the course in 1958 she was promoted to aerospace engineer - the first black female NASA engineer. By 1979 she was the senior engineer. She retrained for Equal Opportunities . Retired from NASA 1985. All 3 of them were reward numerous awards and honors. In 2020 two had a satellite named after them.

Mary was the first Native American female engineer -she was the great-grand daughter of the Cherokee chief John Ross. She was also the first female engineer in the history of the LockHead Corporation - aeroplane builders. 1928 , aged 20, earned BA in Mathematics. 1938 earn MA in Mathematics. 1949 obtained professional certification in engineering. She began her career teaching maths and science for 9 years. In 1941 relocated to California to seek work after the US joined WW11. In 1942 Lockhead hired her as a mathematician. She worked for Lockhead from 1942 until her retirement in 1973. She is best remembered for her work on aerospace design. She was one of the 40 founding engineers of the renowned and secretive Skunk Works (Advanced Development Programme) team responsible for many aviation innovations ( eg. P-38 Lightning -then the world’s fastest aeroplane) and aerospace innovations (egs. Poseidon and Trident missiles). In the 1950’s she was a founding member of the Society of Women Engineers. When she retired she continued to recruit young women and Native American youth into engineering careers. She lived to the age of 99. She was held in such high regard her picture was placed on the reverse of the 2019 Sacagawea Dollar.

Mohammed is the Founding Executive Director of Ahidhula Swanirvar Sangstha. He lives in Bangladesh which lies on a huge river delta where 3 rivers meet the sea. The country is low lying and flooding is now more frequent and severe due to climate change. It is estimated the country will permanently lose one fifth of its land under water. In the monsoon season children could not get to school. He had a dream to build floating schools. He studied Architecture. Once he had finished his studies he set about creating a charity. No money came forward so he collected waste - like plastic and glass. It took 4 years, by recycling waste, to buy 4 traditional boat hulls. In 2002 his first floating school was launched.In 2004 he received his first international funding. He now has 26 floating schools 8 other countries now have floating schools Source Earth Heroes

nCharlie is the son of Joe Casely- Hayford OBE - the acclaimed British fashion designer… He has followed in his father’s footsteps. He was named one of Go’s best dressed men in Britain in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2017 he was named one of the 40 dressed men in the world. That year he collaborated with Topman on a successful suiting collection Sources Wikipedia *Superheroes *by Sophia Thakur