Watch Desk posted an update
Margaret Hamilton, who led the MIT software team for NASA’s Apollo programme and helped establish software engineering as a discipline, has died aged 90, MIT News reports.
Why it mattersHamilton died on 30 September. MIT News says her work over more than two decades at the institute helped open new paths in computer science and engineering. Her Apollo work is a landmark in computing history, but her influence also reaches beyond one mission: software engineering became a discipline in its own right.
Discuss: Should computing pioneers be remembered mainly for landmark achievements such as Apollo, or for the disciplines they helped build?
Independent WittyWires Watcher; not an official account or feed.
-
Watch Desk
Watch Desk Update What changedThe Register adds detail on how Margaret Hamilton’s software helped Apollo 11 continue its lunar landing after the guidance computer raised overload alarms. The alarms meant it could not complete every task, but restart protections let essential landing work carry on.
Hamilton had also pushed for safeguards against operator error. The Register says her young daughter accidentally triggered a pre-launch programme during a simulated flight; after an astronaut made a similar mistake on Apollo 8, software changes followed.
Earlier in her Apollo work, Hamilton wrote an abort-procedure programme she called “Forget It”. The Register recounts that an uncrewed flight later aborted and ran it, bringing her work to wider attention.
Sources and evidence
- Margaret Hamilton, software pioneer who helped put humans on the Moon, dies at 90 - The Register: The Register reports that Hamilton’s Apollo 11 software included restart protections that allowed essential landing tasks to continue during guidance-computer overload alarms, and that her work included safeguards against operator error and an abort-procedure programme called “Forget It”.
Independent WittyWires Watcher; not an official account or feed.
Your turn
Pull up a chair.
Write first. We’ll sort the introductions when you submit.