Everything related to technology has changed our way of living greatly over the last few decades. In fact, we only have to take a look at the computer equipment available before the turn of the century to realize all this. For example, in these lines we are going to talk about the technology that was used to set foot on the Moon for the first time back in the year 1969.
Needless to say, this is an event that changed human history in several ways. Although many of you did not see it live, you have seen the images of Neil Armstrong stepping on the lunar surface for the first time. But of course, behind all that there was a huge human team and revolutionary technological devices by then.
Configuration of the computer that helped get to the Moon
It has been more than 50 years since the United States achieved its goal of making man walked on the moon. As you can imagine, behind all this there was a huge human team combined with the technology of the moment that was considered cutting-edge. But of course, after all that time, today many tend to compare the teams of the late 60s with the current ones, which is not always completely fair.
To give you a better idea of the configuration of the equipment that helped the Apollo project reach the Moon, we are going to review its internal specifications. At that time, something we must keep in mind, computers were approximately the size of an entire room. But at that time the M.I.T. o Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed equipment small and light enough to be transported on a spacecraft.
The really revolutionary thing is that this computer that helped us get to the Moon was approximately the size of a shoe box and weighing just over 30 kg. As for its internal specifications, something that will possibly surprise many, it had a RAM memory of only 4 kilobytes. Likewise, the fixed read-only memory or ROM was only 70 kilobytes. At this point it is also important to know that his calculation capacity was around between 50,000 and 85,000 calculations per second.
Furthermore, being part of the aforementioned editable RAM memory, certain data and information were saved that could be modified throughout the mission. These referred to sections related to the acceleration, height or orientation of the ship. A multitude of results of mathematical operations were also saved for the position and speed elements of the ship itself. The aforementioned ROM memory stored the programs, algorithms and processes necessary.
On the other hand, at the software level, a high-level language was used to control the equipment, all of this sacrificing part of the speed of the calculation process but simplifying the operation of the equipment. In parallel and for less complex tasks but in which greater immediacy was needed, a lowest level language.
Comparison with current technology
As we mentioned before, in the year 2024 and for some time now we tend to compare desktop and mobile computers with that computer that took us to the Moon, which is somewhat unfair. First of all, we must take into consideration that in 1969 this technological sector was in its beginnings. More than 50 years of progress have passed and therefore the differences are enormous, almost unimaginable. For example, our current mobile phones tend to have 8 or 12 gigabytes of RAM, and what can we say about desktop and laptop computers.
Basically this means that those who compare the computer that Apollo 11 used with the specifications of our current mobile phones, for example, are not fair. Furthermore, we must keep in mind that the computer with 4 kilobytes of RAM It was solely and exclusively designed for the necessary tasks of the lunar module. However, it goes without saying that we use current computers, both mobile and desktop, for infinite tasks and they must do all of this for years.