Rob Keeble
Member
- Messages
- 12,633
- Location
- GTA Ontario Canada
Calling all the gray haired techs. These past two nights i have been staying up to watch a series on the development of the appollo series spacecraft from the time of Kennedys announcement of the US going to the moon.
Not sure if any of you guys get this channel or have seen or see the series in the US. Here is a link.
http://tvschedule.knowledgenetwork....sp?seriesID=16285401&seriesTitle=moonmachines
Well I had some real flashbacks and memories when they talked about the first computer that they had to squeeze into the command module and showed the pioneering of a whole new field of technology.
They mentioned that the first computer used to control the lunar landing had 72Kbyte of memory. I thought back to the day when i graduated and started work in a lab back in SA developing a 32Kbyte memory card for a refrigerated storage holding shed control system to be used at the docks to store and care for fruit before being shipped. Do you think there are many people around that know what a kilobyte even means when everyone talks in gigs and dont even know what it stands for. My oldest son said yeah dad thats 2 and half songs on my mp3
Boy this thing had 64 chips on it and was so big it had to fit into a 19"rack size card. That was back in 1980.
They mentioned MIT doing the development and the guys creating the word software for the first time. The guy that had the chief of software title said he told his wife the news and his wife said not to tell anyone about his new title.
If you can get to see the series it is fantastic. Its the stuff dreams are made of. Except the great thing is its all real and no holywood nonsense.
I said to my boys and my wife, the most fantastic thing is they were trully making things up as they went along. Yeah we get a lot of new tech nowadays and much of it is taken for granted, but the stuff i really admire is the work that is created from no prior art. Just simply building on making an item bigger or faster or more memory is great but not the kind of achievement that the guys involved in the build of this whole industry achieved.
Now we have windows so bloated with useless code I often wonder how some of the so called "programmers" would have faired with a 8085 processor and assembler programming language. Guess its just a sign of my going grey.
Hats off to the leaders of those days who inspired, hired and motivated people to engage in such a historic venture. It must have been such a roller coaster ride testing and developing those craft.
Not sure if any of you guys get this channel or have seen or see the series in the US. Here is a link.
http://tvschedule.knowledgenetwork....sp?seriesID=16285401&seriesTitle=moonmachines
Well I had some real flashbacks and memories when they talked about the first computer that they had to squeeze into the command module and showed the pioneering of a whole new field of technology.
They mentioned that the first computer used to control the lunar landing had 72Kbyte of memory. I thought back to the day when i graduated and started work in a lab back in SA developing a 32Kbyte memory card for a refrigerated storage holding shed control system to be used at the docks to store and care for fruit before being shipped. Do you think there are many people around that know what a kilobyte even means when everyone talks in gigs and dont even know what it stands for. My oldest son said yeah dad thats 2 and half songs on my mp3
Boy this thing had 64 chips on it and was so big it had to fit into a 19"rack size card. That was back in 1980.
They mentioned MIT doing the development and the guys creating the word software for the first time. The guy that had the chief of software title said he told his wife the news and his wife said not to tell anyone about his new title.
If you can get to see the series it is fantastic. Its the stuff dreams are made of. Except the great thing is its all real and no holywood nonsense.
I said to my boys and my wife, the most fantastic thing is they were trully making things up as they went along. Yeah we get a lot of new tech nowadays and much of it is taken for granted, but the stuff i really admire is the work that is created from no prior art. Just simply building on making an item bigger or faster or more memory is great but not the kind of achievement that the guys involved in the build of this whole industry achieved.
Now we have windows so bloated with useless code I often wonder how some of the so called "programmers" would have faired with a 8085 processor and assembler programming language. Guess its just a sign of my going grey.
Hats off to the leaders of those days who inspired, hired and motivated people to engage in such a historic venture. It must have been such a roller coaster ride testing and developing those craft.