Mondo Knows Facts
The Apollo Guidance Computer was an early user of silicon microchips
NASA purchased hundreds of thousands of integrated circuits in the 1960s to build the moon landing navigation system
NASA was one of the largest early customers for microchips, consuming a significant portion of all silicon integrated circuits produced in the United States during the mid-1960s. The Apollo Guidance Computer helped navigate astronauts to the Moon and relied on custom NOR logic gate chips. It operated at a clock frequency of about one megahertz.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
A full NASA spacesuit costs millions of dollars to produceCustom life support systems turn every spacesuit into a tiny personal spacecraftFootprints left on the Moon will last for millions of yearsWithout wind or water erosion Apollo astronaut tracks remain undisturbedApollo astronauts left retroreflector mirrors on the Moon surfaceLaser pulses fired from Earth measure lunar distance down to millimetresApollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon in July 1969Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface during NASA missionThe Intel 4004 was the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessorReleased in 1971, the 4-bit processor contained 2,300 transistors on a single piece of siliconThe first commercial hard disk stored five megabytes of dataThe IBM 350 disk storage unit used fifty magnetic platters each measuring twenty inches across
Tags: apollo, nasa, microchips
The Apollo Guidance Computer was an early user of silicon microchips: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- NASA purchased hundreds of thousands of integrated circuits in the 1960s to build the moon landing navigation system. The figure is taken from NASA History, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a technology fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.
