Apollo Guidance Computer

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was a digital computer produced for the Apollo program that was installed onboard each Apollo Command Module (CM) and Lunar Module (LM). The AGC provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidance, navigation, and control of the spacecraft. The AGC had a 16-bit word length, with 15 data bits and one parity bit. Most of the software on the AGC was stored in a special read only memory known as core rope memory, fashioned by weaving wires through magnetic cores, though a small amount of read-write core memory was provided.

Astronauts communicated with the AGC using a numeric display and keypad called the DSKY. The AGC and its DSKY user interface were developed in the early 1960s for the Apollo program by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. The AGC is notable for being one of the first integrated circuit-based computers.

Read more about Apollo Guidance Computer:  Operation, Design, Block II, PGNCS Trouble, 00404 Error Code, Applications Outside Apollo

Famous quotes containing the words apollo, guidance and/or computer:

    “Epic poem,—ten thousand lines—revolution of July—composed it on the spot—Mars by day, Apollo by night,—bang the field-piece, twang the lyre.”
    Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.
    Anne Sullivan, U.S. educator of the deaf and blind. The Last Word, ed. Carolyn Warner, ch. 16 (1992)

    What, then, is the basic difference between today’s computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern—a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.
    Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)