The computer that landed on the moon had less memory than a text message. If her code failed, three astronauts would die 240,000 miles from home.
Her name was Margaret Hamilton, and in 1969, she was doing something almost no one understood: writing software that would navigate humanity to the moon and back.
She was 32 years old, leading the Software Engineering Division at MIT, responsible for the Apollo Guidance Computer—a machine with 72 kilobytes of memory. To put that in perspective: a single photo on your phone today uses more memory than the entire computer that landed humans on the moon.
Hamilton and her team were programming a machine less powerful than a modern calculator to perform one of the most complex tasks in human history. And they were doing it without any of the tools we take for granted today.
No "undo" button. No helpful error messages. No Google to search for answers.
Every line of code had to be perfect the first time. Because 240,000 miles from Earth, there would …More