A video about the Minuteman ICBM’s guidance computer by Alexander the ok.
He even made a simulator for it, in case you want to try out what it would have been like to program an ICBM’s guidance computer in the 60’s 😁
Minuteman D-17b: The Desktop Computer Was Born in an ICBM
Submitted 1 year ago by hydroptic@sopuli.xyz to technology@beehaw.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJPnZzZtswc
baggins@beehaw.org 1 year ago
Skimmed through the video and will watch at a later date. Absolutely fascinating. It used to work on kit that had electronics like that back in the 70s. It was like being back in the factory :-)
When I was in the Royal Artillery (80-97) we had a system called PADS (Precision Azimuth Determining System) that was used for survey of gun positions. It had done gabby gyroscope inside. I now know where that originated ;-)
hydroptic@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Ha, that’s interesting. You’ve been a part of the history of computing in some sense.
Glad you liked the video! You might also enjoy Alexander’s video about how the Apollo Guidance Computer got turned into the world’s first digital fly-by-wire system: Digital Fly-By-Wire: The Apollo Guidance Computer’s final gift to the world
baggins@beehaw.org 1 year ago
The computer used by the Artillery (the one I was trained on in the 80s) was called FACE and had a magnetic core memory of about 8k nigelef.tripod.com/fc_computer.htm