Breaking Barriers to the Moon and Back:
How Margaret Hamilton's Software Sent
Men to the Moon
As a Pioneer
“I was the first programmer to join and the first woman they hired. Male engineers were already working on the project, but they were hardware engineers and it wasn’t their thing. I had it as my background. I think [the lab] just figured that I could handle the unknown.”
-Margaret Hamilton
Margaret Hamilton was Project Apollo’s first woman and first software engineer. Initially, she struggled to earn male colleagues’ respect. Early on, she was assigned to write code for an unmanned Saturn booster test that would only run in the unlikely event that the mission would abort. Dissatisfied with writing code that may never be used, she named the program “Forget It.” In fact, the mission did abort. “Forget It” ran and saved the test mission. This boosted Hamilton’s confidence.
Punch card. A Lickly Story. No date.No one learned coding in school, so Hamilton’s team consisted of self-taught pioneers. Since code and computers were so new, Hamilton’s team learned and set many precedents.
"Because software was a mystery, a black box, to upper management, we were given total freedom and trust. . .
There was no choice but to be pioneers."
-Margaret Hamilton
“When answers could not be found, we had to invent them; we were designing things that had to work the first time . . .”
-Margaret Hamilton
Hamilton originated many creative solutions. Writing code meant punching holes in cards for machine processing. When mistakes happened, she had to “print” a new punch card. Hamilton instead decided to punch new holes with a pencil, then cover the original holes with tape. This allowed her team to debug more quickly.
Hamilton realized that if a Project Apollo computer got stuck on a small task, it couldn’t perform important tasks like landing the Eagle. Therefore, Hamilton created asynchronous flight software, which prioritized the most important tasks. This level of software development was groundbreaking and surprised even Hamilton’s team.
Margaret Hamilton’s MIT Instrumentation Lab employee card.
Wall Street Journal. No date.
Margaret Hamilton Standing in Apollo Simulation. MIT. No date.