Apollo Guidance Computer

The Apollo Guidance Computer's sealed main case beside its DSKY, the calculator-like keypad and display the astronauts used to talk to it. Designed at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, it weighed about 70 pounds and took up less than a cubic foot, at a time when most computers filled rooms. It first flew on Apollo 7 in 1968, and a year later one steered Apollo 11 down to the lunar surface. It belongs here as proof that a real computer could be small, rugged and trusted with lives.