__NOTOC__ Albert L. Hopkins Jr. (1931 - 2016) was an American computer designer. He worked at the US

MIT Instrumentation Laboratory Draper Laboratory is an American non-profit research and development organization, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its official name is The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. The laboratory specializes in the design, development, an ...

(now known as the

Draper Lab Draper Laboratory is an American non-profit research and development organization, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its official name is The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. The laboratory specializes in the design, development, an ...

) during the development of the

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

Guidance, Navigation, and Control System, or the GN&C. The system was designed in two forms, one for the command module and one for the

lunar module The Apollo Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed s ...

. The CM version included an optical system with an integrated scanning

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...

and sextant for erecting and correcting the inertial platform. Albert Hopkins received a Ph.D. from Harvard University under

Howard Aiken Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was an American physicist and a list of pioneers in computer science, pioneer in computing. He was the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I, the United States' first C ...

, he then joined the MIT Instrumentation Lab where he was Assistant Director; together with Ramon Alonso, and Hugh Blair-Smith he was a member of the groupBiographies of Apollo Guidance Computer People

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

. that designed the computer, designated AGC for

Apollo Guidance Computer The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was a digital computer produced for the Apollo program that was installed on board each Apollo command module (CM) and Apollo Lunar Module (LM). The AGC provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidanc ...

, identical in the CM and LM. The AGC was a 15-bit plus parity machine with a 1 MHz

clock A clock or chronometer is a device that measures and displays time. The clock is one of the oldest Invention, human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month, a ...

. It was about one cubic foot in volume and weighed about 80 pounds. It used integrated circuit

NOR gate The NOR (NOT OR) gate is a digital logic gate that implements logical NOR - it behaves according to the truth table to the right. A HIGH output (1) results if both the inputs to the gate are LOW (0); if one or both input is HIGH (1), a LOW o ...

s, two to a package, but integrated

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

and

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

devices had not been developed yet. It had 2,000 words of magnetic ferrite core read-write memory and maybe 24 thousand words of read-only memory in the form of

magnetic core A magnetic core is a piece of magnetism, magnetic material with a high magnetic permeability used to confine and guide magnetic fields in electrical, electromechanical and magnetic devices such as electromagnets, transformers, electric motors, ele ...

ropes. These cores used metal tape magnetic cores. With such limited computing resources, the

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

had to be extremely tightly written in

assembly code In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

. These computers were designed with extremely long mean times to failure. Fifty were built by

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

, and none failed during several years of life. The human interface was a keyboard with ten digit keys and a few auxiliary keys for such things as "+" and "–" and "enter", and a display with three numbers of 5 decimal/octal digits, a two-digit program number, and a two-digit verb and a two-digit noun. The astronauts used it for all phases of command. After leaving Draper Labs, Albert Hopkins, with his wife Lynne Zaccaria, opened a pottery and antiques shop in South Danbury,

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

. Laterly they lived in

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. He died on May 17, 2016. http://www.chadwickfuneralservice.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=3724138&fh_id=12966

References

Bibliography

The Apollo Guidance Computer (1963)A Multiprocessing Structure (1967)

External links

Some Aspects of the Logical Design of a Control Computer: A Case Study (1971)We hack the Moon: Albert Hopkins, Apollo Guidance Computer Designer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hopkins, Albert L. American computer scientists Harvard University alumni People from Merrimack County, New Hampshire 1931 births 2016 deaths

See also

References

Bibliography

External links