dsky
dsky - Flickr photograph by moonmeister. Two years ago I had some fun reading the lunar journals. Here is a good story that has done the rounds over the past few weeks. It was about the NASA Apollo lander module, size of the computer and 64 kb of memory! Both the blog entry by David McMahon and the full story by the ABC Science Unit are worth reading.
Although the computer was slow, the MIT team developed a robust, real-time multi-tasking operating system (long before Linux). The system worked, but almost caused the first moon landing to be aborted in the final minutes before the touchdown. For recognising the error code and >making the critical decision to continue, the mission control expert back on Earth later received the US Medal of Freedom along with the three Apollo astronauts. It is a true story of some hard core programmers and technicians on a voyage of discovery.
Apollo 11 Astronaut Niel Armstrong gave a conference speech on the role technology played in the race to the Moon. In it he described the tiny computer that he used for the Gemini missions. "Changing orbits, rendezvousing with another spacecraft, returning to earth to a pre-determined landing spot, all with a primitive, little, 4K machine."
.. beats holding up your thumb or taking a squiz out the window.