1. Margaret Hamilton
Software Engineer, Pioneer Director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT's Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

2. The Challenge

3. MIT and the Apollo Program
MIT’s Instrumentation Lab received the contract to program the computers that would control the navigation and guidance system for the Apollo mission to the moon

4. Margaret Hamilton at MIT
B.A. in Mathematics from Earlham College in 1958
Working to help support her husband while he was at school
Planned to get an advanced degree in abstract math when her husband finished his schooling
Worked as a programmer at MIT on various projects, she was the first person to successfully get a very tricky program to run and gained a reputation for her work

5. Hamilton at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1962, when she was developing software for the SAGE system. Credit: Margaret Hamilton

6. Margaret Hamilton and Apollo
She was chosen to be the Director and lead programmer on Apollo, when she moved to the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at MIT.
Her team at NASA was responsible for developing Apollo’s on-board guidance software, at a time when software was only just emerging as a new concept in the field of computer science.

7. Margaret Hamilton inside a mock-up of the Apollo command module. MIT

8. Computer programs were written by hand, each line of code was then typed onto punch cards that could be read by a computer
The computer printout of the program was pages long
The programs were stored on tapes which were too bulky and fragile to be used onboard the command module or lunar lander.

9. Apollo Guidance Computer source code
A tiny part of the printout of the AGC source code for the on board flight software for the Apollo Guidance Computer. Credit: Margaret Hamilton

10. The following was excerpted from a description of the photo in an MIT document: ‘Taken by the MIT Instrumentation Lab [Draper Lab] photographer in 1969 (during the time of Apollo 11). Here, Margaret is shown standing beside listings of the software developed by her and the team she was in charge of, the LM and CM on-board flight software team.’
In this photo went viral when it was tweeted.

11. Margaret Hamilton and “Software”
“Software during the early days of this project was treated like a stepchild and not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines, such as hardware engineering. … I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering; yet, treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process. When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”

12. Rope Core Memory
Moon Machines: Software for the Apollo Mission: 72KB RAM
Moon Machines, through viewpure

13. Software engineer Margaret Hamilton captured the spirit of working on Apollo at the MIT Instrumentation Lab. “How fortunate I was to work with and share this experience with the many talented and dedicated people who made this possible. There was no second chance. We knew that. We took our work seriously, many of us beginning this journey while still in our 20s. Coming up with solutions and new ideas was an adventure. Dedication and commitment were a given. Mutual respect was across the board. Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust. We had to find a way and we did. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.”

15. Margaret now
In 1986 she founded her own company called Hamilton Technologies, developed around the Universal Systems Language, that aimed to accelerate the technology that was swiftly taking over the world and introduce it to even more of the population.

16. Awards
In 1986, she received the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award by the Association for Women in Computing.[
In 2003, she was given the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for scientific and technical contributions. The award included $37,200, the largest amount awarded to any individual in NASA's history.
In 2009, she received the Outstanding Alumni Award by Earlham College.

17. Make your initials in rope core memory

18. Works Cited
"About Us." Hamilton Technologies, 2016, Accessed 15 Oct
Creighton, Jolene. "Margaret Hamilton: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Took Us to the Moon." Futurism, 20 July 2016, futurism.com/margaret-hamilton-the-untold-story-of-the-woman-who-took-us-to-the-moon/. Accessed 15 Oct
Hancock, Jaime Rubio. "Margaret Hamilton, the Engineer Who Took the Apollo to the Moon." Medium.com, 25 Dec. 2014, Accessed 15 Oct This is a republication of an article from Verne, a website from the Spanish newspaper El País focused on viral content. 
McMillan, Robert. "Her Code Got Humans on the Moon — and Invented Software Itself." Wired, 13 Oct. 2015, Accessed 15 Oct
"Moon Machines: Software for the Apollo Mission: 72KB RAM." YouTube, uploaded by Sikander Iqbal, Accessed 15 Oct
Tylko, John. "MIT and Navigating the Path to the Moon." AeroAstro Magazine, nos , web.mit.edu/aeroastro/news/magazine/aeroastro6/mit-apollo.html. Accessed 15 Oct
Williams, Hayley. "The Woman Who Sent Man to the Moon: Margaret Hamilton." Lifehacker.com, 10 Feb. 2016, Accessed 15 Oct