Testing one of the World's First Embedded Systems (1968)
Raytheon test engineer Robert Zagrodnick running diagnostics on a pair of Apollo Guidance Computers¹ (AGC) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Instrumentation Laboratory (I-Lab)². The MIT designed 2.048 MHz 16-bit computer was 10 years ahead of its time and used integrated circuits to run a real-time multitasking³ operating system that enabled astronauts to control an Apollo spacecraft by typing simple commands on the DSKY keyboard interface in pairs of nouns and verbs. It had 2048 words of erasable magnetic-core memory and 36,864 words of read-only core rope memory⁴ with cycle time of 11.72 µs. It was designed to be fault-tolerant and was able to run several subprograms in priority order. Each of these processes was given a time slot to use the computer’s sparse resources. The computer interfaced to these onboard systems: DSKY(display and keyboard), IMU, Hand Controller, Command Module Rendezvous Radar, Lunar Module Landing Radar, Telemetry Receiver, Engine Command, and Reaction Control System.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_Laboratory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory
AGC Specifications
2,048 words of 15-bit ferrite core RAM
36,864 words of read-only memory
85,000 instructions/second
Dimensions: 61 cm × 32 cm × 17 cm
Weight: 31.8 kg
Power supply: 28 VDC, 55 W, 2.5 A
