Minuteman D-17b: The Desktop Computer Was Born in an ICBM
Minuteman D-17b: The Desktop Computer Was Born in an ICBM
A video about the Minuteman ICBM's guidance computer by Alexander the ok.
He even made a simulator for it, in case you want to try out what it would have been like to program an ICBM's guidance computer in the 60's đ
Skimmed through the video and will watch at a later date. Absolutely fascinating. It used to work at a Raytheon company (Cossor in HarlowvUK) on kit that had similar electronics, back in the 70s. It was like being back in the factory :-)
When I was in the Royal Artillery (80-97) we had a system called PADS (Precision Azimuth Determining System) that was used for survey of gun positions. It had some fancy gyroscopes inside. I now know where that originated ;-)
Ha, that's interesting. In some sense you've been a part of the history of computing.
Glad you liked the video! You might also enjoy Alexander's video about how the Apollo Guidance Computer got turned into the world's first digital fly-by-wire system: Digital Fly-By-Wire: The Apollo Guidance Computer's final gift to the world
The computer used by the Artillery (the one I was trained on in the 80s) was called FACE and had a magnetic core memory of about 8k https://nigelef.tripod.com/fc_computer.htm