Topic: Margaret Hamilton's contributions to Apollo
SpaceAholic Member
Posts: 4437 From: Sierra Vista, Arizona Registered: Nov 1999
posted 06-03-2015 01:27 PM
The software for the Apollo guidance computer was written by a team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory), headed up by Margaret Hamilton.
The process of actually coding in the programs was laborious, as well. The guidance computer used something known as "core rope memory": wires were roped through metal cores in a particular way to store code in binary. "If the wire goes through the core, it represents a one," Hamilton explained in the documentary Moon Machines. "And around the core it represents a zero." The programs were woven together by hand in factories. And because the factory workers were mostly women, core rope memory became known by engineers as "LOL memory," LOL standing for "little old lady."