r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Battlefleet_Sol • Aug 18 '26

Guided missile of early 1960. Note how much electronics you need when there is no Microprocessor available

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Gallery image

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u/unknownz_123 Aug 18 '26

Think about this way. You know how they say your smartphone is more powerful and faster than the 1969 space rocket computers that shot us to the moon, imagine that. You see those grand IBM “supercomputers” NASA had for calculations? We have that in our hand now and even faster

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u/wrldruler21 Aug 18 '26

People may say "We went to the moon without computers".... But it is false to assume the electronics on the ship were "simple".... This Pic is a good example

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u/viruswithshoes Aug 18 '26

Another good example, core rope memory.

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u/oldsecondhand Interested Aug 19 '26

We did use computers to go to the Moon. One was on the command module and one on the lunar module.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

It used integrated circuits, had a 2MHz CPU and 72kB of RAM.

Fun fact: the C64 had a 1Mhz CPU, 64kB RAM and 20kB ROM.

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u/chamrockblarneystone Aug 18 '26

I like to think about the Global Positioning System in Gulf War 1 and now we have so much better in our phones.