A significant historical computer, which seems ridiculously weak when compared to today’s technology, is the Apollo Guidance Computer, also known as the AGC. The AGC was used during the Apollo human spaceflight program and was instrumental in Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, which is considered to be one of the greatest scientific and technological achievements of all time.
The Apollo Guidance Computer was designed at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union raced to successfully land a manned spacecraft on the moon, and the MIT-designed computer was an absolute revolution in the development of computers.
However, when compared to the computers of today, the Apollo Guidance Computer might look like a joke. It weighed more than 30 kilograms, and the frequency of its processor was only 2.048 MHz: its computing power was equivalent to the computing power of a contemporary pocket calculator.
Still, men of extraordinary intelligence worked for thousands of hours to develop the AGC and managed to create a computer that successfully landed the man on the moon at a time when the simplest personal computers were nothing but science-fiction. The simplicity of AGC was ingenious, as it never malfunctioned: during the entire Apollo Program, it flashed its critical warning lights only once when the crew of Apollo 11 forgot to turn off the auxiliary radar.