Bananas for Scale
Apollo Guidance Computer

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Apollo Guidance Computer

The computer that navigated humans to the Moon/Technology

The AGC had about 74 KB of memory and a clock speed of 1.024 MHz. It guided Apollo astronauts to the Moon and back, running on less computing power than a modern musical greeting card. Margaret Hamilton's software for it basically invented the field of software engineering.

Measurements

Width6.1 tenths m
8 tenthsCello lengths
3.9 hundredthsSubway cars
33.9Ring diameters

24 inches

Height3.2 tenths m
4.3 tenthsCello lengths
10.8Olive lengths

12.75 inches

Depth1.7 tenths m
764 millionSilicon atoms
1.12Ice cream cones
8.3 hundredthsKing size beds

6.625 inches

Weight32 kg
1.8 hundredthsHippopotamuses
2.7 millionHousefly weights

About 70 pounds

Power consumption55 W
1.38Christmas light strings
6.5 hundredthsToasters
7.4 hundredthsHorses
Clock speed1 million Hz
1.9 billionthsGreen light frequencies
1.4 millionDryer tumbles
4.1 millionHuman breaths

1.024 MHz

Memory (RAM + ROM)75,776 B
3.8 millionthsHours of 4K video
7.6 thousandthsTikTok video files

74 KB total

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