Everything Science Forum

Just to show how far computers (microprocessors) have come since the mid 1960's:

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was the first recognizably modern embedded system (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Embedded-system), used in real-time (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Real_time-computing) by astronaut (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Astronaut) pilots (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Pilot-%28spaceflight%29) to collect and provide flight information, and to automatically control all of the navigational functions of the Apollo spacecraft (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Apollo-spacecraft). It was developed for the Apollo program (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Apollo-program) by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/MIT-Instrumentation-Laboratory) under Charles Stark Draper (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Charles-Stark-Draper), with hardware design led by Eldon C. Hall (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Eldon-C.-Hall). Based upon MIT documents, early architectural work (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Computer-architecture) seems to have come from J.H. Laning Jr., Albert Hopkins, Ramon Alonso, and Hugh Blair-Smith. The actual flight hardware was fabricated by Raytheon (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Raytheon), whose Herb Thaler was also on the architectural team.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Apollo-Guidance-Computer (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Apollo-Guidance-Computer)
 
A similar article is available for the Lauch Vehicle Digital Computer
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Launch-Vehicle-Digital-Computer (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Launch-Vehicle-Digital-Computer)
 
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19730063841_1973063841.pdf (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19730063841_1973063841.pdf) <use save target as>
 
Pretty amazing what was accomplished then.