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[b]Apollo Guidance Computer sold for nearly $280K at auction[/b] An extremely rare Block II prototype Apollo Guidance Computer originating from MIT and Apollo Hero Don Eyles sold for $279,858 according to Boston-based RR Auction. The Apollo Guidance Computer was a technical marvel: in the era of room-sized computers, NASA allocated one cubic foot on their spacecraft for the electric brain that would be responsible for guiding humans to the lunar surface and safely returning them home. It was up to the best and brightest at the MIT Instrumentation Lab to make it fit. Rather than using the large vacuum tubes or big discrete transistors typical in computers of the time, MIT engineers pioneered the application of integrated circuits — microchips — to accomplish the same task in a diminutive package. During 1963, the Instrumentation Lab consumed 60 percent of the integrated circuit production in the United States, and by 1964 Fairchild Industries had shipped more than 100,000 ICs for use in the Apollo program. The computer hardware was thus a combination of cutting-edge technology and old-school craftsmanship: while these innovative, mass-produced chips made their way into the AGC's logic modules, the computer's mission-critical software was stored in handmade 'rope memory,' contained inside its fixed memory modules, which could not be erased, altered, or corrupted. This rope memory required absolute precision and was sewn by workers recruited from local textile factories: copper wire was woven in and around ring-shaped magnetic cores, with each wire threaded through the core representing a binary "1," and each wire bypassing the core representing a "0." It took eight weeks for the workers to weave the memory for a single flight computer, at a cost of $15,000 per module. As a 27-year-old MIT computer expert, Don Eyles had the unequaled distinction of saving the Apollo 14 mission. A quick-thinking mathematical genius, he worked at Draper Labs, the place commissioned by NASA to write the computer code that would take us to the moon. Eyles saw the monumental Apollo program through from beginning to end — Apollo 5 through Apollo 17 — and chronicled his incredible experiences in his book, "Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir." "Don Eyles greatest achievement was the computer code that he had written for the Lunar descent of Apollo 11, so it's not surprising that the Apollo Guidance Computer achieved such an impressive figure,¡± said Bobby Livingston, Executive VP at RR Auction. Highlights from the sale include, but are not limited by: [list][*]Dave Scott's Apollo 15 Lunar surface-worn OPS Bracket containing a secret pouch that carried souvenir flags sold for $50,000. [*]Apollo Display and Keyboard Assembly (DSKY) sold for $50,000. [*]Gemini Attitude and Rotational Hand Controller sold for $43,751. [*]Dave Scott's Lunar Orbit-Flown Apollo 15 CSM Launch Checklist sold for $37,500. [*]Space Shuttle attitude director indicator sold for $37,022. [*]Apollo 15 Flown Command Module Endeavour rescue arrow from Crew Hatch sold for $34,950. [*]Cernan's heavily annotated 53-page CSM Checklist flown on Apollo 17 sold for $34,371. [*]Apollo 11 Rope by Don Eyles Assembly Listing containing the Lunar Module computer source code for the Apollo 11 mission sold for $24,347. [*]Nikolai Budarin's Flown Omega X-33 watch sold for $22,000. [*]Northwest Africa (NWA) 6963 Martian meteorite end cut sold for $20,000.[/list] The Space & Aviation Auction from RR Auction began on October 11 and concluded on October 17.
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