This is the Apollo Guidance Computer’s read-only rope memory. That’s right — memory literally made from rope. Depending on how the rope was knit, a software program could be initiated.
It’s still binary programming, but the entire process was extremely laborious and slow. It could take months to weave an entire program. If a wire went through one of the circular cores, it was a binary one, if it went outside of them, it was a binary zero. It seems hard to even imagine this, but at the time, this was a great breakthrough. This was the equivalent of 72 KB of storage, which was almost 20 times higher data-per-volume than existing alternatives.
As for the Apollo Guidance Computers (AGC), they provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidance, navigation, and control of the spacecraft – as much as the day’s technology permitted it. Astronauts communicated with the AGC using a numeric display and keyboard called the DSKY (DiSplay&KeYboard, pronounced ‘DISS-key’), the whole technology being developed by MIT engineers. Another significant development is the fact that AGCs were the first computers to use integrated circuits.
![](https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Agc_view.jpg)
So when someone tells you that people flew to the Moon using computers weaker than your cell phone — that’s an understatement. They flew to the Moon using a technology we’d have a hard time even imagining.
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