For reasons passing understanding, this video falsely asserts that they did it all in two weeks, which really undersells just how much effort this crew went through. It took MONTHS of work. The first video in the series Marc did came out Nov 13, 2018 and the final working run wasn't posted until Jul 16, 2019. The whole team did an amazing job, over a long period of time.
Yup. Karl built an Arduino based DSKY clone (seen in this video). Marc's company REMANUFACTURED pins and connectors necessary to interface with it, from original blueprints. Mike has been tirelessly archiving, finding, and saving the various software versions the various missions flew. Sadly, some might remain lost to time, but Mike will leave no stone unturned. Truly astounding work from some really smart people.
Seen a video of women weaving the ROM memory modules. In these years your fingers could touch the individual bits of the operating system. Rome was not built in one year.
@@Wizardofgosz And when they really complete this project, they can go to Cape Carnivoral (or what was it) and launch that thing again. How cool is that?
James Australian What’s your point? Even if they didn’t they could learn very easily... I work on electronics and I work on cars and currently I am a handyman doing odd jobs, the only difference is electronics requires much more thinking and figuring out and following complex mapping. Working with cars or houses or what you seem to think is “hands on” is the same as electronics without the complex mapping and whatnot. You still have to take apart, fix, solder, replace parts, all the stuff you do with cars and houses.
It's so awesome that he chose to restore the AGC. He easily could have just auctioned it off, made a couple hundred grand and called it a day. Taking the time and effort to get it up and running makes the whole thing just so much cooler.
this is why my mom thinks my plans to restore a 1st gen dell professional computer and dell branded crt is silly since the computer is literally 32 years old runs ms-dos and has only 3 and 5 inch floppy drives and the crt would have shipped with the computer but is currently a paper weight due to the h.o.t. burning out i need to take a crt apart and de-electrify the picture tube as i do a full deep clean and repair the horizontal output transistor and diagnose any other issues with it before i can actually start using that computer with that old old screen from 1992
This was a thoroughly fascinating project. I watched all the videos. Simply amazing. When they powered up the computer memory, and recovered the last state of the computer in magnetic memory - including the latitude and longitude - you felt like you were there 50 years ago. A very impressive achievement. This was most deserving of being featured by WSJ - it is very inspirational for our creators of the future.
It couldn't had ended up in better hands. Well done guys. You saved this piece of history from the junkyard. You can all be very proud of yourselves!!!
I watched this series on Marc's UA-cam channel from day one and it was an incredible journey!! The series has some incredible moments and absolutely worth checking out. As a space tech enthusiast, I wish I had enough brain power to have had even a small part in this project.
I watched every bit of the videos they posted about the restoration. Amazingly interesting stuff. Hearing the programs were gone, nothing could run it, nobody knew nothing about nothing, so gratifying to see the restoration bring together the programmers and run the program.
@@jgordon7719 I forget if they went to more than one museum but there are data carts that still hold the programs 50 years later. One of the programmers had several of them.
@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 Don't know about the air and space museum but they've tried several memory modules including from at least one museum. I'm assuming they backed up the data of everything they tried.
It still amazes me that something so complex at the time was the start of the computer tech that we now take for granted. To me it seems unbelieveable that our mobile phones contain more circuits & processing power etc than the ones that actually landed man on the Moon. Congratulations to Marc & his team for preserving a very special part of exploration history.
These computers were actually very simplistic devices…sophisticated for the time maybe but even a scientific calculator from the 80’s is far more powerful 😯
@@chrisvig123 The progress in electronics is amazing. I first worked in a TV repair shop in 1969 as a kid 16yo and except for a few years I worked in electronics and communications my whole work career. My Dad worked on building the Apollo fuel cells
It hurts me that such historical artifacts ended up as scrap instead of in a museum or a historical collection but, on the other hand, it may had been this that made it possible for this computer to end up in the right hands after all, and I'm happy it did!
The past must be studied in order to understand our present and then plan for our future. Old tech is always a humbling kick right in the commodity of what we take for granted!
@ The single purpose of history is exactly that, to see beyond our own life, to share the experiences of the many that were here before us, and to ensure our progress does not get reset generation after generation. To claim something is fake because you cannot see it by your own eyes is to not appreciate human consciousness.
5 років тому
@@glidershower To believe everything that's written in book is called being dumb. The past could be completely different from what we are told and learn in school in the brainwashing process. We as humans are told what to believe and what to do, no freedom on this planet if you do not see past the lies.
I remember following along with the progress on Marc's channel. It's such an interesting trip through reverse engineering with some heavyweights. Ken Shirriff is such a titan of reversing silicon that it's crazy. It's amazing they sussed out the inner workings and managed to make it work at all.
I am an enthusiast of the Apollo missions. I love to see a group of sinior gentlemen dedicated with passion to recover the past for the next generations. I congratulate you and wish you success and recognition in this noble venture.
“'You know,' said Arthur, 'it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.' 'Why, what did she tell you?' 'I don’t know, I didn’t listen.'"
Nice one!. I can remember being a young boy in the late seventies going with my father to work on several weekends, they were working on one of the first computerised credit card systems in the UK, possibly the first kn the world (waits for gnashing of teeth etc, have the dates of it going live). They were writing code on machines that only had 32k of memory, it took half of that to get them going.... They did it, I still have the keyring Dad got from IBM (a 'failed' memory chip) encased in plastic after a business trip to the USA to get the kit needed. This kind of kit needs to be preserved!. I might add, my first home computer only had 64k of ram in the eighties... Gòod on you!.
I've recently had the misfortune of cleaning up embedded C code written by 2019 graduates who only know Python. Yeah, to such kids, I'm sure 2 KB is way too little... don't tell them it's all you really need if you're going to navigate to another planet, they'd have nightmares.
@@TheNefastor I have no doubt that some of the smaller rockets that are sent into space have about the computing power of my TV. Possibly with a raspberry pi like computer with a mobile chip.
"When androids rule the world they will be thankful and, therefore, merciful to their organic creators for keeping alive their ancestors." Haha! "Gratitude" is a human invention for organized religious reasons of control. Androids won't rule the world, but also...they won't deal in gratitude. Gratitude is learned from other people, not coded. I also get your humor and smiled.
I’d love to see them hook up a control stick and run it as a simulation on a modern computer so that someone can manually “land on the moon” using the AGC. That would be so cool!
I'm an electronic professor from Barcelona and I explain the students what is the AGC and show them the schematics. I wish they are fascinated as me!!! Thank you.
La "old lady" memory o la ROM hecha a costura, una de las responsables de que el AGC, pidiera sobrevivir a dos impactos de relámpagos y a la sobrecarga dada por el radar de aproximación lunar, se podía apagar y encender sin perder sus últimos datos de trabajo. Dios!!,quisieras que las computadoras de hoy tuvieran ese nivel de confiabilidad, como con el AGC alguna vez tuvo. Saludos.
La tecnología que fue creada a mano fue impresionante . Aunque nada a cambiado no existe otra technologia . Lo impresionante es ver como todos esos cables se cruzan entre si.
This is fantastic. I am glad I found it. THanks guys for restoring this awesome piece of history. Hard to believe that all that equipment would "fit" into a simple chip today.
I started working on circuit boards in the 80s but found it advantageous to look back at previous designs to understand current designs of circuits. It’s best not to trash old equipment once it’s gone it’s gone.
I'd love to have a replica of this. Powered by Rasberry Pii or something similar. Lots of companies make components for flight simulator cockpits and so on, so maybe one of them could try to make a Lunar Module Guidence Computer replica. Just the interface part of course.
Thanks for those that took the challenging restoration adventure and shared with us. As a lay person that used to program Motorola R2 kits using JBUG back in late 70’s I get an immense sense of pride of human ingenuity from those that built these things in those pioneering days. Just truly amazing what people can achieve when put to a common task.
I'm impressed that the young guy was willing to learn the restrictions the designers had in the 60's. Those guys had to work at the lowest levels to get those pieces working. And no compilers to transfer a high level programming language into a binary representation the electronics could understand. I started working with electronics in the early 70's. This video brought back memories.
What an inspiring story of unlikely heroes. Kudos to all these guys for recognizing the culturally significant items and doing such great work. Very great story. I also love how they came together in a quasi-u official guerilla style. Super cool. Reminded me of oceans 11 haha.
Hey WSJ, help get a 2 hr PBS NOVA documentary going. Marc’s multipart restoration video series is award winning. And pair his vids with contemporary documentary films. It’s worth it!!
J Gordon Not the public at large, but s subset. Look how popular Curious Marc’s AGC restoration series is. And with a creative intro interest to a significant audience exists.
@@larryscott3982 another great series was the Xerox alto. These are life changing technological Marvel's in history that I feel like almost nobody knows about
This guidance computer shows how innovative and ahead of its time this computer was. It also demonstrates how the experts managed to build something that nobody can really recreate due to it's complexity.
Nice to see this video about the project. Sad to read so many comments of people who don't know what they are saying instead of informing themselves. Obviously, I watched the whole series of videos on Curiousmarc's channel and as so many people who comment here I couldn't wait for the next one. This was an amazing project by Marc and his team and to quote Jimmy Loocke: "I hope many people will be able to see this computer many years from now".
even the series didnt cover all the tech .... but it did highlight a load of it ... I think the best part of was the MIT old video of the ladies assembling the memory cores and rom for it ... BY HAND
"Two hundred years from now I want people te see this computer." That sentence was beautiful. I hope that one day, around the year 2219, some people will say: "Thank you. We will take good care of it." (And then again, in 2419, etc 🙂)
This is the rare Wall Street Journal video that isnt complete BRAINROT. I really like the narrator imo. WSJ should keep this team around. They have a knack for finding quality content.
I watched the entire series of restoration videos without understanding the backstory presented in the wsj video. Marc's series is a must watch for any computer geek.
Great work guys. Your names should go down in history. For the computer restoration work you have done, and for the legacy of the Apollo program. The data on these computers is a record of history. This is one step for computer restoration, and one giant leap for human history in space.
I was watching the channel when they first started trying to diagnose it. The levels of difficulty that they had to deal with are dumbfounding; everything from building their own interfaces to interact with the computer, to creating software that would recreate the "mission" and feed data into the Apollo modules. And that was AFTER they had to do things as simple as figuring out which parts of the computer were which; because these are computer parts that any normal tech would be able to recognize.
@@Strothy2 There is no need to be rude and flame the guy asking for help, is there? Imagine if the people in the video were like that - there would be no project like this. They would be working in Wallsmart and happy to be there. Do you work at Wallsmart? It seems that *you* can't write - it is shown "what" it is called, not "how".
just google making the agc work ... they have many video's on it ... and it is a very interesting set of vid's to watch .... even shows early memory ... the bane of all tech's back then
And now many of us hold the equivalent of supercomputers in our hands every day. Very cool to think how quickly computers have and are still advancing.
In 1969 a computer like that would have filled the basement of a skyscraper. It would have needed a raised floor for cooling..This device was ten years ahead of its time in an era when a single years advancement doubled processing power. IC chips were invented in 1961 but there was no single chip computer, that did not happen until 1971 at Intel. The machine they are playing with is a nugget of technology. VERY HISTORIC.
I followed this on Marc’s You Tube Chanel ......as a retired electronics engineer it is fascinating stuff. Some very clever people doing interesting stuff!
The restoration team is composed entirely of brilliant, motivated and amazingly talented individuals -- an uncommon blend of genius focused on a common problem. Still, Mike Stewart is a prodigy among them. To possess such a depth and breadth of knowledge on this important piece of history 50 years on despite his young age -- and then to be in a position to *apply* that knowledge . . . well, it was quite an experience to witness, even if only through UA-cam.
Watched all of the CuriousMarc restoration videos....kinda happy and sad, when it was over, though.... (it's that young guy who really knows how it works... Mike Stuart.... ) I guess he actually 'built' an AGC equivalent with programmable gate arrays... that literally 'copied' all the electronic logic gates, and memory. I see there are always 'doubters' present.... most of them are either too young, or too ignorant of the 1960's to understand the mindset.... it was a different time.... and we wanted to beat the 'ruskies'.... and we did.....Thanks for the video...
Important elements of the past need to be preserved... Great to see it happening... I thought all of this was kept by NASA? Considering the cold war atmosphere, etc...it is truly breathtaking to see how casual they were about it...
The can't keep every single bit of technology they've ever used. For the most part, it actually doesn't make much sense for them to keep it. Preserving, restoring or doing anything with it means extra money and time.
@@CanIHasThisName YEAH, YOU DEF WOULD NOT KEEP "THE MOST IMPORTANT ADVANCEMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY" PARTS AND PIECES, T-DATA, ETC. I MEAN - IT'S JUST "THE GREATEST LEAP" BUT, THROW THAT STUFF OUT, NO ROOM..
@@40HDR Your exaggerations are neither funny nor accurate. They didn't keep this because it simply wasn't all that important. Firstly, this wasn't THE computer that landed humans on the moon for the first time, and secondly, you do realize they've actually got a museum with these exact same parts, right?
@@pvtpeppers6176 The funny thing is too if you can work on a car and repair one that's fairly modern you're the equivalent of a rocket scientist from the 1960s and 70s
@@magnacartasamadams8189 To be fair, these days you can just plug in a laptop and run diagnosis on the system. That hardly qualifies you as a rocket scientist. The scientists in the 60s and 70s built the rocket, the spaceships, the computers and the simulators from scratch. And by doing that forwarded our computer tech by at least a decade.
Just some info. Apollo 11's onboard guidance computer had a processing speed of 1 MHz, and had about 4 kilobytes of reusable memory. The original Nintendo Game Boy, released in 1989 a mere 20 years after the first moon landing, was four times faster at 4MHz and had double the memory.
If we needed the advanced Apollo guidance computer to get to the Moon, how did the first unmanned probe, the Soviet Luna 2 navigate its way there in September 1959? My point is the engineers found a way to get to the Moon before such advanced computers existed.
significance of firsts is subjective. just like US likes to say they won "the space race" as if it's only the moon that matters, in just about every other space-first winner was soviet union. IMO first general purpose computer is more significant. Colossus couldn't run applications only calculations around specific problem domain, ENIAC was the first that could run application code like modern computer does. (disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with any of the nations involved)
I don't know if you know this but it's kinda cool to mention NASA built most of it's hardware with 50's technology that was proven to work very reliably. However, this computer was really cutting edge 60's technology.
This shows how "barely possible" the moon landing was back in the day. They had to scrap the "only use tried and tested technology" approach, because the Apollo program was at the very edge of what was technologically possible at the time. But in doing so they kickstarted an enormous leap in computer technology. Many of the ideas first implemented in the AGC are still valid today in mission critical applications as well as everyday operating systems.
The 'first' computer the Eniac had 17,000 tubes. The Apollo 11 computer had 17,000 transistors. The current iPhone 15 has 19 billion transistors. Technology has come a long way and absolutely every nut and bolt from the Apollo spacecraft and missions should be preserved.
Absolutely amazing! Great that people like this are alive! What a thing to end up on the scrap heap! And to the 78 dislikes to this video... Wow.. what a sad existence you must live. 👍🏻
those guy's are AWESOME I don't really understand a lot of what they are doing , but it is so cool to watch them bring the old equipment back to life ,,,, I feel like Penny on The Big Bang watching them 😁
Yep, from 5:14 and forward. He did a video months ago about this: ua-cam.com/video/Bh_gP5aF3ys/v-deo.html 😁 Edit: I think that in Scotts' video, at 2:24 the guy with the camera is the producer of this video.
@@fernandojvalencia8151 you're a dumb idiot, IF you actually mean what you say. IF you don't and you're trolling, you're a dumb idiot. Either way, you're a dumb idiot. Only way out of this is to go full adult. So, when are you going full adult?
This is awesome... Regardless of how long it took to get up and running, it is cool to see how something so old and now days outdated could do such monumental task and be such a big part of history
There is another UA-cam channel called Smarter Every Day that went and did a whole episode on Saturn V guidance computer at the Huntsville Space Center and he interviewed the engineer who worked on it. It's fascinating to watch. The memory was all set by hand. Each transistor, every single wire, components, everything. It will truly blow your mind
I went last year and it was just incredible. I was almost moved to tears seeing a real Saturn V. Space travel is by far the most fascinating thing humans have ever achieved, and I can't wait for the next manned missions!!!
Ah but there is where you are mistaken. If you watch all the videos, you will see that the equipment that was developed, for example the gyros, were high tech for the time. The computing tasks were divided between ground computers and flight computers, and data uploaded that could not be calculated by the onboard computer. Software was designed to be failsafe, and the computer could restart where it stopped if overloaded and high priority tasks would still be done. Not really "rudimentary", because scientists and engineers figured out how to do it by pressing the state of the art to the limit to accomplish what they had figured out was required.
@@stephanweinberger What, talking like NASA does in 2019 about how to get humans across the Van Allen radiation belt without them being killed by the radiation ?? The moon landing was filmed by Stanley Kubrick and he told you decades before about people like Epstein in his movie EYES WIDE SHUT. WTFU from your little "man on the moon" school boy dream.
*APOLLO 11. THE LOST TAPES THAT ARE NOT LOST* NASA searched for but could not locate some of the original Apollo 11 data tapes - “original” in the sense that they directly recorded data transmitted from the Moon. An intensive search of archives and records concluded that the most likely scenario was that the program managers determined there was no longer a need to keep the tapes - since all the video and data were recorded elsewhere - and they were erased and reused. The data on those tapes, including video data, were relayed to the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center), during the mission. The video was recorded there and in other locations; there is no missing video footage from the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The search discovered high-quality broadcast versions of the footage. NASA worked with Lowry Digital, a premier film restoration company, to process the video using techniques unavailable in 1969. The restored video was released in HD as part of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11.
I can’t believe how smart these guys are; brains, motivation, dedication and passion, preserving a major part of the most important advancement in human history for future generations to marvel at.
hey buddy the moon landing was filmed in a huge warehouse like a supermarket hall they need not a computwr because they would know that a room is has 4x4 😚
For reasons passing understanding, this video falsely asserts that they did it all in two weeks, which really undersells just how much effort this crew went through. It took MONTHS of work. The first video in the series Marc did came out Nov 13, 2018
and the final working run wasn't posted until Jul 16, 2019. The whole team did an amazing job, over a long period of time.
Yup. Karl built an Arduino based DSKY clone (seen in this video). Marc's company REMANUFACTURED pins and connectors necessary to interface with it, from original blueprints. Mike has been tirelessly archiving, finding, and saving the various software versions the various missions flew. Sadly, some might remain lost to time, but Mike will leave no stone unturned.
Truly astounding work from some really smart people.
Lol thanks WSJ, quality journalism
@@crosstian it's owned by Rupert Murdochs' News Corp. What do you expect?
Seen a video of women weaving the ROM memory modules. In these years your fingers could touch the individual bits of the operating system. Rome was not built in one year.
@@Wizardofgosz And when they really complete this project, they can go to Cape Carnivoral (or what was it) and launch that thing again. How cool is that?
The brain power in that room is freaking impressive. I felt dumb just watching
When it comes to real hands on work I doubt any of them could fix a leaking tap or change a tyre on a car.
@@jamesaustralian9829 id rather have their smarts than what i have now i can change a motor on any car but would love to have their smarts.
You can compensate by watching a flat-earth video, that make everyone feel smarter.
@@jamesaustralian9829 This is "real hands on work"
James Australian What’s your point? Even if they didn’t they could learn very easily... I work on electronics and I work on cars and currently I am a handyman doing odd jobs, the only difference is electronics requires much more thinking and figuring out and following complex mapping. Working with cars or houses or what you seem to think is “hands on” is the same as electronics without the complex mapping and whatnot. You still have to take apart, fix, solder, replace parts, all the stuff you do with cars and houses.
This computer is absolutey priceless. Congratulations to the whole team.
It's so awesome that he chose to restore the AGC. He easily could have just auctioned it off, made a couple hundred grand and called it a day. Taking the time and effort to get it up and running makes the whole thing just so much cooler.
Money means nothing at their age
Money is fleeting, making history is eternal.
Yeah because now he can auction it off for more and he paid nothing to have it repaired
this is why my mom thinks my plans to restore a 1st gen dell professional computer and dell branded crt is silly
since the computer is literally 32 years old runs ms-dos and has only 3 and 5 inch floppy drives
and the crt would have shipped with the computer but is currently a paper weight due to the h.o.t. burning out
i need to take a crt apart and de-electrify the picture tube as i do a full deep clean and repair the horizontal output transistor and diagnose any other issues with it before i can actually start using that computer with that old old screen from 1992
@@slycooper1001 cool story dude
This was a thoroughly fascinating project. I watched all the videos. Simply amazing. When they powered up the computer memory, and recovered the last state of the computer in magnetic memory - including the latitude and longitude - you felt like you were there 50 years ago. A very impressive achievement. This was most deserving of being featured by WSJ - it is very inspirational for our creators of the future.
Love that it goes right back to doings it’s job, even though it’s 50 years later. The little computer just does it’s job no questions asked
It couldn't had ended up in better hands. Well done guys. You saved this piece of history from the junkyard. You can all be very proud of yourselves!!!
CuriousMarc's video series on this was a nail bitter --- every video was gold and I couldn't wait for the next one. The last video was so satisfying.
And today you have people with the latest smartphones and still believe that the earth is flat.
lego and slime family * still believe we lost the technology to leave low earth orbit
@@CMWeaver no, they would say that we destroyed it cuz nasa bla bla bla conspiracy stuffs
You should listen to Alex Jones. The whole thing is a liberal conspiracy.
@@CMWeaver what do you call the ISS? pretty sure thats low earth orbit
@@TheEagleofSteel Alex Jones is one of the dumbest people you could listen to
I watched this series on Marc's UA-cam channel from day one and it was an incredible journey!! The series has some incredible moments and absolutely worth checking out. As a space tech enthusiast, I wish I had enough brain power to have had even a small part in this project.
I watched every bit of the videos they posted about the restoration. Amazingly interesting stuff. Hearing the programs were gone, nothing could run it, nobody knew nothing about nothing, so gratifying to see the restoration bring together the programmers and run the program.
I wish they would have recapped going to the history museum to get a working piece of test software, the only machine known to have it
@@jgordon7719 I forget if they went to more than one museum but there are data carts that still hold the programs 50 years later. One of the programmers had several of them.
Sure in isolation I'm sure that's true
They got a chance to see read the other program memory modules.
@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 Don't know about the air and space museum but they've tried several memory modules including from at least one museum. I'm assuming they backed up the data of everything they tried.
It still amazes me that something so complex at the time was the start of the computer tech that we now take for granted. To me it seems unbelieveable that our mobile phones contain more circuits & processing power etc than the ones that actually landed man on the Moon. Congratulations to Marc & his team for preserving a very special part of exploration history.
These computers were actually very simplistic devices…sophisticated for the time maybe but even a scientific calculator from the 80’s is far more powerful 😯
@@chrisvig123 The progress in electronics is amazing. I first worked in a TV repair shop in 1969 as a kid 16yo and except for a few years I worked in electronics and communications my whole work career.
My Dad worked on building the Apollo fuel cells
Your normal Texas Instrument-82 school calculator had more juice,,, your smart phone is light years ahead of this.
That’s such an understatement, the integrated technology in your digital watch is more advanced than this very brick that got man on the moon.
we never went to the moon
It hurts me that such historical artifacts ended up as scrap instead of in a museum or a historical collection but, on the other hand, it may had been this that made it possible for this computer to end up in the right hands after all, and I'm happy it did!
Our modern computers have tons of memory and CPU speed, just to watch porn and memes.
Indeed, and that highlights human genius and stupidity altogether
Dang Jose , how many names you need ?
You say that like it's a Bad Thing.
@@mssedmebich1621 right?
Umm, what? You’re just going to forget cats and cat related media???
The past must be studied in order to understand our present and then plan for our future.
Old tech is always a humbling kick right in the commodity of what we take for granted!
@ The single purpose of history is exactly that, to see beyond our own life, to share the experiences of the many that were here before us, and to ensure our progress does not get reset generation after generation.
To claim something is fake because you cannot see it by your own eyes is to not appreciate human consciousness.
@@glidershower To believe everything that's written in book is called being dumb. The past could be completely different from what we are told and learn in school in the brainwashing process. We as humans are told what to believe and what to do, no freedom on this planet if you do not see past the lies.
Well said Mr. Binary.
@ That's one blue pill/suppository I always managed to dodge.
Don't trascend, friend.
@ Solipsism is a literal slippery mind slope.
I remember following along with the progress on Marc's channel. It's such an interesting trip through reverse engineering with some heavyweights. Ken Shirriff is such a titan of reversing silicon that it's crazy. It's amazing they sussed out the inner workings and managed to make it work at all.
I am an enthusiast of the Apollo missions. I love to see a group of sinior gentlemen dedicated with passion to recover the past for the next generations. I congratulate you and wish you success and recognition in this noble venture.
get your medication checked out
I'm surprised it didn't churn for a long time and then spit out a response: "42."
You’re really not going to like it
no, but it did generate a '404 Error' . . . (lol)
THAT would be so Zen.....Like a perfect circle response.
Well, if it was allowed to run for 10 million years straight, perhaps it would.
“'You know,' said Arthur, 'it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.'
'Why, what did she tell you?'
'I don’t know, I didn’t listen.'"
Nice one!. I can remember being a young boy in the late seventies going with my father to work on several weekends, they were working on one of the first computerised credit card systems in the UK, possibly the first kn the world (waits for gnashing of teeth etc, have the dates of it going live). They were writing code on machines that only had 32k of memory, it took half of that to get them going.... They did it, I still have the keyring Dad got from IBM (a 'failed' memory chip) encased in plastic after a business trip to the USA to get the kit needed. This kind of kit needs to be preserved!. I might add, my first home computer only had 64k of ram in the eighties... Gòod on you!.
*2 KB worth of RAM and a 4 MHz CPU landed Apollo 11 on the moon. It's really hard to comprehend that in 2019.* 😂😂😂😂
Lol yep
AL Ian my computer has 8 million times more ram and 1250x the clock speed.
@@candykanefpv I'm thinking it could get you to Alpha Centauri then. 😂😂😂
I've recently had the misfortune of cleaning up embedded C code written by 2019 graduates who only know Python. Yeah, to such kids, I'm sure 2 KB is way too little... don't tell them it's all you really need if you're going to navigate to another planet, they'd have nightmares.
@@TheNefastor I have no doubt that some of the smaller rockets that are sent into space have about the computing power of my TV. Possibly with a raspberry pi like computer with a mobile chip.
When androids rule the world they will be thankful and, therefore, merciful to their organic creators for keeping alive their ancestors.
haha!
Dude that’s heavy
"When androids rule the world they will be thankful and, therefore, merciful to their organic creators for keeping alive their ancestors."
Haha! "Gratitude" is a human invention for organized religious reasons of control. Androids won't rule the world, but also...they won't deal in gratitude. Gratitude is learned from other people, not coded. I also get your humor and smiled.
Michael T it was a joke you idiot....
@@mikkel066h read his comment fully......oh, almost forgot: you idiot! .... learn some basic human interaction
I’d love to see them hook up a control stick and run it as a simulation on a modern computer so that someone can manually “land on the moon” using the AGC. That would be so cool!
They did it ! : ua-cam.com/video/r_eBGSe5zEQ/v-deo.html
CuriousMarc's video Apollo Guidance Computer Part 23: Flying the Apollo 11 Moon Landing with the Original AGC Code and part 24 does this.
@@threebuddies Nice dude, thanks!
Yeah! Like one of those Logitech controllers used to steer submarines!
You'd need to hook it up to Stanley Kubrick's camera dollies in order for it to reproduce the moon-landing.
I'm an electronic professor from Barcelona and I explain the students what is the AGC and show them the schematics. I wish they are fascinated as me!!! Thank you.
La "old lady" memory o la ROM hecha a costura, una de las responsables de que el AGC, pidiera sobrevivir a dos impactos de relámpagos y a la sobrecarga dada por el radar de aproximación lunar, se podía apagar y encender sin perder sus últimos datos de trabajo. Dios!!,quisieras que las computadoras de hoy tuvieran ese nivel de confiabilidad, como con el AGC alguna vez tuvo.
Saludos.
THe schem drawings would be like a magnet to me..i love techno stuff like this!
La tecnología que fue creada a mano fue impresionante . Aunque nada a cambiado no existe otra technologia . Lo impresionante es ver como todos esos cables se cruzan entre si.
This is fantastic. I am glad I found it. THanks guys for restoring this awesome piece of history. Hard to believe that all that equipment would "fit" into a simple chip today.
Big thanks to Jimmie Locke for finding and taking care of this computer, and to CuriousMarc for producing such an amazing series about the restoration
What a noble challenge: putting the effort to preserve for future generations this computer system and hard wired programming.
I started working on circuit boards in the 80s but found it advantageous to look back at previous designs to understand current designs of circuits. It’s best not to trash old equipment once it’s gone it’s gone.
So glad these guys are preserving this amazing machine! To have it power up and run after such a long time is an amazing achievement.
i am so disapointed that nasa discarded those computer after the mission and not keeping them in a museum for everyone to see
I'd love to have a replica of this. Powered by Rasberry Pii or something similar. Lots of companies make components for flight simulator cockpits and so on, so maybe one of them could try to make a Lunar Module Guidence Computer replica. Just the interface part of course.
Thanks for those that took the challenging restoration adventure and shared with us. As a lay person that used to program Motorola R2 kits using JBUG back in late 70’s I get an immense sense of pride of human ingenuity from those that built these things in those pioneering days. Just truly amazing what people can achieve when put to a common task.
That man is a true Patriot. What an irreplaceable gift he has bestowed.
I'm impressed that the young guy was willing to learn the restrictions the designers had in the 60's. Those guys had to work at the lowest levels to get those pieces working. And no compilers to transfer a high level programming language into a binary representation the electronics could understand.
I started working with electronics in the early 70's. This video brought back memories.
I watched every one of Marc's videos. It was an incredible achievement, and one that I hope will be celebrated for years.
What an inspiring story of unlikely heroes. Kudos to all these guys for recognizing the culturally significant items and doing such great work. Very great story. I also love how they came together in a quasi-u official guerilla style. Super cool. Reminded me of oceans 11 haha.
Hey WSJ, help get a 2 hr PBS NOVA documentary going.
Marc’s multipart restoration video series is award winning.
And pair his vids with contemporary documentary films. It’s worth it!!
Unfortunately I don't think the public has the attention span. But I absolutely love the series, and his UA-cam channel
J Gordon
Not the public at large, but s subset.
Look how popular Curious Marc’s AGC restoration series is. And with a creative intro interest to a significant audience exists.
@@larryscott3982 another great series was the Xerox alto. These are life changing technological Marvel's in history that I feel like almost nobody knows about
J Gordon
Marc’s vids are really engaging.
I agree after last year’s Nova episode of Apollo’s Daring Mission.
This guidance computer shows how innovative and ahead of its time this computer was. It also demonstrates how the experts managed to build something that nobody can really recreate due to it's complexity.
Nice to see this video about the project. Sad to read so many comments of people who don't know what they are saying instead of informing themselves. Obviously, I watched the whole series of videos on Curiousmarc's channel and as so many people who comment here I couldn't wait for the next one. This was an amazing project by Marc and his team and to quote Jimmy Loocke: "I hope many people will be able to see this computer many years from now".
Sad to read your comment: just because you watched the whole series of Curiousmarc doesn't make you well informed.
even the series didnt cover all the tech .... but it did highlight a load of it ... I think the best part of was the MIT old video of the ladies assembling the memory cores and rom for it ... BY HAND
"Two hundred years from now I want people te see this computer."
That sentence was beautiful. I hope that one day, around the year 2219, some people will say: "Thank you. We will take good care of it."
(And then again, in 2419, etc 🙂)
Erik Bakker precies!
All that brain power to fake the moon landing's impressive
CuriousMarc is the channel and if you watched this you NEED to watch the full restoration over there pronto. Amazing job.
This is the rare Wall Street Journal video that isnt complete BRAINROT.
I really like the narrator imo.
WSJ should keep this team around. They have a knack for finding quality content.
I watched the entire series of restoration videos without understanding the backstory presented in the wsj video. Marc's series is a must watch for any computer geek.
ran out of detective books?
Really cool that a guy like Jimmie managed to find that computer. What cool project!
Great work guys. Your names should go down in history. For the computer restoration work you have done, and for the legacy of the Apollo program.
The data on these computers is a record of history.
This is one step for computer restoration, and one giant leap for human history in space.
Along with the AGC hardware, the advent of software came into being as well. The term "software engineer" was coined by the MIT team.
#HumansAreAwesome
Thank you guys for tackling such a beautiful endeavor.
I was watching the channel when they first started trying to diagnose it.
The levels of difficulty that they had to deal with are dumbfounding; everything from building their own interfaces to interact with the computer, to creating software that would recreate the "mission" and feed data into the Apollo modules.
And that was AFTER they had to do things as simple as figuring out which parts of the computer were which; because these are computer parts that any normal tech would be able to recognize.
Beeing a space engineer, I got a tear in my eyes after each episode.
It´s an important and great achievement that those guys have done.
What a legend, the value of all this stuff will be insane in 200 years, so strange how they were just throwing this stuff away in the 70's.
yup, that's government for you.
When they turn on the guidance system... suddenly the lunar lander in the National Air and Space Museum fires up and starts flying around randomly :D
Hehe!
Good job, thank's for preserving a
great part of space exploration history.
5:34 - is this Scott Manley there in the left??
Yes also made a video about the restauration
@@spinningjenny1629 nice, thanks
So neat! Nice piece of history restored! Great video!
What's the channel mentioned in this video? WSJ doesn't link.
Curiousmarc
@@Strothy2 There is no need to be rude and flame the guy asking for help, is there? Imagine if the people in the video were like that - there would be no project like this. They would be working in Wallsmart and happy to be there. Do you work at Wallsmart? It seems that *you* can't write - it is shown "what" it is called, not "how".
ua-cam.com/channels/3bosUr3WlKYm4sBaLs-Adw.html
CuriousMarc
just google making the agc work ... they have many video's on it ... and it is a very interesting set of vid's to watch .... even shows early memory ... the bane of all tech's back then
@@Effectlife Scott Manley was in the video, so he may have something on his as well.
A round of applause for jimmy loocke and Marc and everyone else who have the drive to restore our historic technology artifacts
This is awesome! A team of hobbyists who are professionals from different generations.
I loved learning about Core Rope Memory after watching the other videos...so cool
And now many of us hold the equivalent of supercomputers in our hands every day. Very cool to think how quickly computers have and are still advancing.
And we use them to watch videos of piano playing cats....the tech has advanced but have we?
@@lepterfirefallit has made us lazy and take things for granted
I don’t know how this ended up on my feed, but I’m sure glad I clicked and watched.
In 1969 a computer like that would have filled the basement of a skyscraper. It would have needed a raised floor for cooling..This device was ten years ahead of its time in an era when a single years advancement doubled processing power. IC chips were invented in 1961 but there was no single chip computer, that did not happen until 1971 at Intel. The machine they are playing with is a nugget of technology. VERY HISTORIC.
Lol no it wouldn’t have. Innovative sure but you’re way overselling it and even for the 60s already 20 years out of date.
@@kishascape Sure. You were around, right? I was working on IBM mainframes in 1968. What were you doing?
Many years ago I met a Radiologist in New York that had a flight computer from the Apollo project. His name was Dr.Hori a Japanese American.
Jay Davis, Any doubts?
This is so cool. Brought a little tear to my eye. My grandfather worked for nasa back in the day, they lived in Huntsville then.
Remarkable, what a worthwhile project. Well done guys.
There is no try. There is only do, or do not. They did. Period.
@White Man You can't out source good work ethic.
Yes master Yoda...
I followed this on Marc’s You Tube Chanel ......as a retired electronics engineer it is fascinating stuff. Some very clever people doing interesting stuff!
I’m happy that this was found and saved! So much critical history has been lost or trashed.
The restoration team is composed entirely of brilliant, motivated and amazingly talented individuals -- an uncommon blend of genius focused on a common problem. Still, Mike Stewart is a prodigy among them. To possess such a depth and breadth of knowledge on this important piece of history 50 years on despite his young age -- and then to be in a position to *apply* that knowledge . . . well, it was quite an experience to witness, even if only through UA-cam.
Thank You for posting this!
Love this. It’s geeks (in a good way) like them that drive innovation and make the world a better place 👍🏻
Watched all of the CuriousMarc restoration videos....kinda happy and sad, when it was over, though.... (it's that young guy who really knows how it works... Mike Stuart.... ) I guess he actually 'built' an AGC equivalent with programmable gate arrays... that literally 'copied' all the electronic logic gates, and memory. I see there are always 'doubters' present.... most of them are either too young, or too ignorant of the 1960's to understand the mindset.... it was a different time.... and we wanted to beat the 'ruskies'.... and we did.....Thanks for the video...
If the guys back then used as many dots as you are, they'd never have been able to code guidance software that can run on just 2KB of RAM.
@@TheNefastor My 'dots' are a strategic pause in thought.... hahaha...oops...
@@TheNefastor you answered my question! 2kb of RAM?! Wow!
@@TheNefastor Well, the software was written within the 40k or so of fixed core rope memory (ROM in today's terms).
Mike's knowledge was amazing. he knew everything
"Its firing the engine"
Somewhere in a space museum one of the rockets starts firing and flying arround the room 🤣
Important elements of the past need to be preserved...
Great to see it happening...
I thought all of this was kept by NASA? Considering the cold war atmosphere, etc...it is truly breathtaking to see how casual they were about it...
The can't keep every single bit of technology they've ever used. For the most part, it actually doesn't make much sense for them to keep it. Preserving, restoring or doing anything with it means extra money and time.
@@CanIHasThisName YEAH, YOU DEF WOULD NOT KEEP "THE MOST IMPORTANT ADVANCEMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY" PARTS AND PIECES, T-DATA, ETC. I MEAN - IT'S JUST "THE GREATEST LEAP" BUT, THROW THAT STUFF OUT, NO ROOM..
@@40HDR Your exaggerations are neither funny nor accurate. They didn't keep this because it simply wasn't all that important.
Firstly, this wasn't THE computer that landed humans on the moon for the first time, and secondly, you do realize they've actually got a museum with these exact same parts, right?
Museums exist for a reason. This ain't no IPhone 2
The funny thing is a car made in the early 90s has more computer processing power
@Magna Carta Sam Adam's- yeah and a 1980s cash register had more computing power.
@@pvtpeppers6176 The funny thing is too if you can work on a car and repair one that's fairly modern you're the equivalent of a rocket scientist from the 1960s and 70s
@@magnacartasamadams8189 To be fair, these days you can just plug in a laptop and run diagnosis on the system. That hardly qualifies you as a rocket scientist. The scientists in the 60s and 70s built the rocket, the spaceships, the computers and the simulators from scratch. And by doing that forwarded our computer tech by at least a decade.
Just some info. Apollo 11's onboard guidance computer had a processing speed of 1 MHz, and had about 4 kilobytes of reusable memory. The original Nintendo Game Boy, released in 1989 a mere 20 years after the first moon landing, was four times faster at 4MHz and had double the memory.
0:28 can't be unseen...
Maybe now we can go back to the moon
For the 11th time? Why?
HAHAHA !!! The "DREAM !!!
Gotta find another Kubrick first lol
"Apollo 18" explains why we never went back to the Moon.
@Luna EB | Wait some years, they will land with the SLS in 2024.
If we needed the advanced Apollo guidance computer to get to the Moon, how did the first unmanned probe, the Soviet Luna 2 navigate its way there in September 1959? My point is the engineers found a way to get to the Moon before such advanced computers existed.
Curious Marc's videos on the AGC restoration are worth watching again.
The---most important computer built, was the first one (programmable) ''COLOSSUS'' AT BLETCHLEY PARK ENGLAND, 1944.
That's actually not the first. But it's close.
@@Craigeek It was the first programmable, electronic computer put to work for a specific task en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
significance of firsts is subjective. just like US likes to say they won "the space race" as if it's only the moon that matters, in just about every other space-first winner was soviet union. IMO first general purpose computer is more significant. Colossus couldn't run applications only calculations around specific problem domain, ENIAC was the first that could run application code like modern computer does. (disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with any of the nations involved)
Bravo. We need people like this.
thank you Alan Turing!
You mean charlie flowers
I don't know if you know this but it's kinda cool to mention NASA built most of it's hardware with 50's technology that was proven to work very reliably. However, this computer was really cutting edge 60's technology.
This shows how "barely possible" the moon landing was back in the day. They had to scrap the "only use tried and tested technology" approach, because the Apollo program was at the very edge of what was technologically possible at the time. But in doing so they kickstarted an enormous leap in computer technology. Many of the ideas first implemented in the AGC are still valid today in mission critical applications as well as everyday operating systems.
yeah I built one, one boring afternoon. but the power was cut, so I had to heat the soldering iron in the fire.
@@stephanweinberger The Brain Trust of America with unlimited funds.
The 'first' computer the Eniac had 17,000 tubes. The Apollo 11 computer had 17,000 transistors. The current iPhone 15 has 19 billion transistors.
Technology has come a long way and absolutely every nut and bolt from the Apollo spacecraft and missions should be preserved.
and they cant do the same thing today ewen with a iphone 😅😂
@@ahmetmutlu1983when did they try to do an Apollo Mission, today, with an iPhone? I didn’t get the memo….
I love these sci fi stories !
@ronhamm you are wrong
Absolutely amazing! Great that people like this are alive! What a thing to end up on the scrap heap! And to the 78 dislikes to this video... Wow.. what a sad existence you must live. 👍🏻
You support free speech ? Then you respect different opinions.
It’s amazing that people blindly believe the government.
those guy's are AWESOME I don't really understand a lot of what they are doing , but it is so cool to watch them bring the old equipment back to life ,,,, I feel like Penny on The Big Bang watching them 😁
Scott Manley?!
Yep, from 5:14 and forward. He did a video months ago about this: ua-cam.com/video/Bh_gP5aF3ys/v-deo.html 😁
Edit: I think that in Scotts' video, at 2:24 the guy with the camera is the producer of this video.
Fly Safe!
Wow. I totally missed noticing him until I looked at the comments.
matty - Where’s the Giant, Manley!?
To those who say we just don’t have the technology anymore to go back. Well apparently we do now
We always did - what we haven't had is the desire. There's been no perceived need to send people back to the Moon.
For you cannot land on the moon. It's a luminary. All lies.
@@fernandojvalencia8151 imbecil
@@fernandojvalencia8151 you're a dumb idiot, IF you actually mean what you say. IF you don't and you're trolling, you're a dumb idiot. Either way, you're a dumb idiot. Only way out of this is to go full adult. So, when are you going full adult?
Bernard Cohen So where can I find a fully functional Saturn V to put the computer in?
This is awesome... Regardless of how long it took to get up and running, it is cool to see how something so old and now days outdated could do such monumental task and be such a big part of history
Momma always said “life is like a monumental task and to run forest”
I CAN NOT believe that computer was scrapped. It belongs in a museum, or teaching school. SOMETHING BETTER THAN MELTED DOWN!
There is another UA-cam channel called Smarter Every Day that went and did a whole episode on Saturn V guidance computer at the Huntsville Space Center and he interviewed the engineer who worked on it. It's fascinating to watch. The memory was all set by hand. Each transistor, every single wire, components, everything. It will truly blow your mind
It’s fascinating. If you are into this stuff, you need to take a trip to the Kennedy space center in Florida. It’s life changing.
I went last year and it was just incredible. I was almost moved to tears seeing a real Saturn V. Space travel is by far the most fascinating thing humans have ever achieved, and I can't wait for the next manned missions!!!
Hi Scott Manley! @5:32
Thank goodness we have men like these saving human history
The guts to go to the moon with rudimentary equipment is unfathomable.
Ah but there is where you are mistaken. If you watch all the videos, you will see that the equipment that was developed, for example the gyros, were high tech for the time. The computing tasks were divided between ground computers and flight computers, and data uploaded that could not be calculated by the onboard computer. Software was designed to be failsafe, and the computer could restart where it stopped if overloaded and high priority tasks would still be done. Not really "rudimentary", because scientists and engineers figured out how to do it by pressing the state of the art to the limit to accomplish what they had figured out was required.
Nobody has been to the moon - its all fake.
@@Kpopzoom go play, the adults are having a talk here...
@@stephanweinberger What, talking like NASA does in 2019 about how to get humans across the Van Allen radiation belt without them being killed by the radiation ?? The moon landing was filmed by Stanley Kubrick and he told you decades before about people like Epstein in his movie EYES WIDE SHUT. WTFU from your little "man on the moon" school boy dream.
@@Kpopzoom Tinfoil hat alert
we might be able to go back if they repair it lol
*APOLLO 11. THE LOST TAPES THAT ARE NOT LOST* NASA searched for but could not locate some of the original Apollo 11 data tapes - “original” in the sense that they directly recorded data transmitted from the Moon. An intensive search of archives and records concluded that the most likely scenario was that the program managers determined there was no longer a need to keep the tapes - since all the video and data were recorded elsewhere - and they were erased and reused. The data on those tapes, including video data, were relayed to the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center), during the mission. The video was recorded there and in other locations; there is no missing video footage from the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The search discovered high-quality broadcast versions of the footage. NASA worked with Lowry Digital, a premier film restoration company, to process the video using techniques unavailable in 1969. The restored video was released in HD as part of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11.
The title is wrong, the words "Try to" don't apply when you actually do something.
Did they?
@Med dy the Earth is flat too
@Med dy God is fake, the moon is fake, the Earth is flat so it can be easily observed under a giant microscope
@@mashedpotatoes5323 Yet liberal wackos believe we're living in a computer simulation ala The Matrix.
@@BigDogCountry plot twist, we actually are in a computer simulation inside a simulation, inside a simulation, inside a simulation....
Nova should have done a program on this, instead we only get a 6 minute youtube video? Has anyone contacted PBS Nova about this project?
MTheory How could they make a program when most clips in this video is Marcs?
I can’t believe how smart these guys are; brains, motivation, dedication and passion, preserving a major part of the most important advancement in human history for future generations to marvel at.
hey buddy the moon landing was filmed in a huge warehouse like a supermarket hall
they need not a computwr because they would know that a room is has 4x4 😚