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Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead developer for Apollo program, stands next to all the code she wrote by hand that took humanity to the moon in 1969
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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Why didn't she write in on a computer?
Because she was writing it for a computer. It then had to be hand-woven into core rope memory for the computer to read.
And the horde of people they hired to weave the copper mesh should themselves be hailed as heroes. Some enthusiasts actually got a guidance unit back up after more than 50 years and it was perfectly capable of still preforming it's intended mission. As long as they give it the inputs it needs the machines left work about as well as they did originally.
A few historic nuggets: computers back in the day were people making computations by hand, eg, give that equation to the computer in cubicle 4, she's got time on her hands. And yes it would probably be a She because tons of women became computers during world war ii. Bletchley Park famously employed tons of women to help break Nazi/Japanese codes for example. Many Computers then went on to become accountants after the war because the skills carry over nicely, and the accounting industry today is still about 50% women largely in part to that legacy. (Although a much smaller % of women go on to become partners, but that's another story.) The first computers were specifically called digital computers to avoid being confused with people computers.
I used to collect mechanical calculators.
You couldn't calculate a re-entry vector with one but you could add a long list of numbers quickly and efficiently.
They were called comptometers.
The ads for them are fascinating:
https://www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/comptometer_ads.htm
This one in particular... https://www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/images/comptometer/ads/big/1910-07-02%20The%20Argus%20%28Melbourne%29.jpg
Pay seven pounds for some training and a guaranteed job as a skilled comptometer operator.