I have lots of different fields of interest, as you might have already figured from my previous blog posts. There is for example polar exploration, science history, early cultures and archaeology on a really long list.
There are two fields which are especially nowadays filled with so much impressive development, breathtaking news nearly every day that keep me more or less stunned like a little boy: astronomy and space flight.
With websites like scienceblogs.com, apod, eso, nasa and astronews it is easy to keep up with all the latest developments.
But beside all this fantastic new stuff of today’s technology I am still interested in the beginnings. You can only fully understand and appreciate the achievement of something if you know where it came from and what efforts have been made to get further, step by step.
By the end of last year a new book was announced, covering the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) in detail. The computer that flew the 27 American astronauts to the moon (Apollo 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 ,16 ,17), and even landed 12 of them (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 ,17) there.
That book was just released (with a minor delay of 6 month, or something) and of course I am already deeply in the middle of it.
The book covers all aspects of this outstanding peace of hard- and software:
- Physical characteristics of the AGC
- Instructions
- Memory Management
- Counters
- Radar, engine and crew interfaces
- Interrupt processing
- Executive and Interpreter
- Basics of guidance and navigation
- Mission programs and operations
- and much more…
It also gives a detailed introduction into early computers, with their serial adders, accumulators and memory banking. If you haven’t heard about these things before don’t be too worried. The author explains them in detail.
So, if you are interested in the early days of computing (hardware and software) then this book is a highly recommended piece of reading. The AGC was the cutting edge of technology back in the 60s.
And you will be surprised ! The AGC did much more then you thought it did. The phrase “my watch or my fridge is more intelligent then the Apollo computer” is not really true. But see/read for yourself !
PS: for a more general overview about the guidance system of Apollo, not describing the computer hardware and software so much in detail, I could recommend the book Digital Apollo, by David Mindell.
