The Apollo Guidance Computer
Architecture and Operation
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $34.99
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- $34.99
Publisher Description
By today's standards, the on-board computer used by the Apollo astronaut's was a primitive affair, but in an age when most computers filled an entire room, this was small, required little power, and incorporated several technologies that were revolutionary for its time.
This is the first book to fully describe the Apollo guidance computer's architecture, Executive software, and the programs used by astronauts. It describes the full range of technologies required in order to fly the Apollo lunar missions, and whicn enabled the astronauts to fly to the Moon - and back!
Customer Reviews
Interesting But Flawed
Overall, I’m enjoying reading this book because I am both a computer and space enthusiast. However, I am struggling to some extent because of the large number of typographical errors. It seems as if the book’s original manuscript was digitized using a slightly out of focus OCR system. For example ‘1’ (the numeral one surrounded by a pair of single quotes) appears as T. Elsewhere an upper case S with a subscripted 1 appears as Si. I’m able to correct these in my head as I read, but it is disctracting.
There are also some basic factual errors that cause me to question the entirety of the book. For example, it is claimed that the largest value that can be expressed by a 14-bit binary number is 16,387 (it should be 16,383). Not wildly wrong, just careless.
For the high price of this book, I expect professional proofreading and typesetting.