Thread by @cfishman

NASA & MIT tried to fly to the Moon using transistors.

But transistors couldn't do enough math, fast enough, to guide spaceships flying 25,000 mph.

So MIT turned to a shaky technology that seemed to have potential:

Integrated circuits. Computer chips.

fastcompany.com/90362753/how-n…

2/ And thereby hangs a tale — and the wildly uncredited birth of modern computing.

MIT drove the quality and reliability of computer chips, for the Apollo spaceship computers. MIT literally taught the early chip makers how to make the product that runs the world.

3/ When Gordon Moore wrote the paper which introduced the idea that became Moore's Law, he only mentioned one organization pioneering use of integrated circuits—NASA, and the Apollo project's leap to the Moon.

There you can see the future, Moore wrote.

fastcompany.com/90362753/how-n…

4/ That's #13 in my 50-part series from last summer on the race to the Moon in the 1960s, and the impact going to the Moon had back here on Earth, for @FastCompany.

Last summer, it was a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing.

#Apollo51

5/ This summer, we need a reminder what Americans, working together, with energy, a clear goal, & a clear deadline can accomplish.

The impossible. That's what we can accomplish.

There was no greater impact from Apollo than in accelerating the digital revolution.

6/ Remarkably, the history of modern computing mostly skips the power, value and impact NASA had on the revolution that started in the spaceships that went to the Moon.

The @FastCompany series is collected here —a fun run of 3-min journeys back to 1969.

fastcompany.com/section/50-day…