I consider the Apollo Guidance Computer Display and Keyboard (DSKY - pronounced "Dis-key") to be the most important bit of hardware in the Apollo program.
The Apollo Guidance Computer is arguably the most important computer ever developed. It was such an early digital computer that the norm for the location of digits hadn't yet settled on the 1, 2, and 3 being on the top row as we see now in a modern mobile phone keypad.
I've wanted to add a DSKY to my collection for more than a decade but they are very scarce. It's been said that only 75 units were manufactured and most are in museums. This is a fully functioning unit that was used in testing.
The DSKY is a fifteen-pound, 8" x 8" x 7" M.I.T.-designed and Raytheon-manufactured data entry and display device with nineteen keys and a twenty-one digit display. A unit like this was mounted into the control panel of each lunar module and two were found in each command module.
This was the astronaut's interface allowing access to the groundbreaking on board Apollo Guidance Computer, developed by MIT. It permitted the astronauts to collect and provide flight information and was very important in the precise landings on the moon needed for a successful mission.
Each different program had a two-digit code and commands were entered as two-digit numbers in a verb-noun sequence. These units were used in all Apollo missions, including Skylab and ASTP.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the DSKY interface and the AGC to the Apollo moon-landing program.
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