NASA used ‘LOL memory’ in the Apollo missions

Here’s something worth sharing: to resist the harsh rigors of space, NASA used something called core rope memory in the Apollo and Gemini missions of the 1960s and 70s. The memory consisted of ferrite cores connected together by wire. The cores were used as transformers, and acted as either a binary one or zero. The software was created by weaving together sequences of one and zero cores by hand. According to the documentary Moon Machines, engineers at the time nicknamed it LOL memory, an acronym for “little old lady,” after the women on the factory floor that wove the memory together. The information comes from the ibiblio Apollo archive, a comprehensive guide on the Apollo Guidance Computer which includes an emulator of the system that’s well worth trying out.