Some of the software that took astronauts to the Moon was physically sewn into Apollo’s computer. Its fixed memory used wires threaded through magnetic cores: a sense wire passing through a core represented 1; bypassing it represented 0.

Software engineers wrote the program, and workers encoded it in wire. The stored instructions joined mathematics with handcraft, computer code made tangible.

The Apollo software that was woven into wire

A close-up of Apollo’s wire memory during manufacture in the original 1965 film — MIT Museum Collections / MIT and WGBH, produced for NASA (1965). Computer for Apollo, original historical film.

Simplified sense-wire diagram: through a core is 1; bypassing it is 0 — Pandi explanatory schematic of a sense wire passing through or bypassing a core. Simplified.

Original historical footage shows workers manufacturing Apollo wire memory — MIT Museum Collections / MIT and WGBH, produced for NASA (1965). Computer for Apollo, original historical film.

The Apollo software that was woven into wire

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