An Incredible Degree of Elegance
Posted on July 21st, 2009 at 1:46 pm by Steve

Allowing for the identical Apollo guidance computer (AGC) in the Command Module (CM), containing a program called COLOSSUS, it is correct to say that we landed on the moon with 152 Kbytes of computer memory.

That quote, and the link included in it, are from a paper by Don Eyles, introduced by the BBC as “a 23-year-old self-described ‘beatnik’ who had just graduated from Boston University and was set the task of programming the software for the Moon landing.”

These days it’s rare to find an icon that fits in 152 Kbytes of computer memory!!! Those guys wrote all the software that got a spacecraft to the moon and back.

I walk by the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory every day… but today I have special respect for the kind of work those people did, and do.