In the 1980s, the U.S. military was trying to map the entire Earth with satellite data. But the problem? The planet isn’t a perfect sphere. And without an exact model of Earth... GPS wouldn't work. Enter Gladys West the woman who quietly helped build the tech your phone still relies on today. Gladys West was a mathematician working at a naval base in Virginia. Her job? Analyze satellite data by hand. But she noticed something: the Earth bulged slightly at the equator and dipped at the poles. If GPS was going to be precise… it needed to know the true shape of the planet. So she built a complex mathematical model of the Earth called a geoid. This was before modern supercomputers. She ran calculations for years, programming by punching code onto physical tape. Her work became the foundation for the GPS system we use today planes, cars, phones, even rescue missions rely on it. And yet, hardly anyone knows her name. #tech #technology #stem #ai #coding