A Cell Phone Today is More Powerful than the Computers that Took us to the Moon

A Cell Phone Today is More Powerful than the Computers that took us to the Moon

Cell Phones have become very advanced today. We use them for Calling, Texting, Navigation, Video, Photography, Gaming, Remote Control, Development, and much more. Since most people use this advanced piece of technology for activities non tech related it is easy to understand how we as a whole underestimate how advanced they have become.

Lets compare an iPhone 7 to the computers used during the Apollo era (AGC or IBM System)

Cost

Apollo Computer: $3.5 Million

iPhone: $199

CPU (Processing Power)

Apollo Computer: 0.043MHz

iPhone: 2.4GHZ ( 1GHz = 1000MHz )

Memory

Apollo Computer: 64kbyte

iPhone: 64GB ( 1GB = 1 million KB)

Size

Apollo Computer: Similar to a car

iPhone: Fits in your hand

So what does this mean?

The iPhone7 is over a million times better in some of these very important computing areas but that does not tell the entire story of how amazing the technology was back then. These machines were ahead of their time and the users that programmed and used them were geniuses. There were no user friendly interfaces like we have today. The Apollo era computers were effective because they were designed to do a specific task to reduce the amount of error and that is exactly what they did. They just would not of been good if you wanted to run another program or download an image during a mission. That would cause some major speed and storage problems.

To me this shows exactly where we are with computers today as a society. We are at a point where the majority of the population only consumes technology despite having the power to use it for so much more. I think phones will continue to get more powerful and more user friendly. (To me meaning less control of the amazing technology) People like ease of use and reliability. In the meantime, just know that if you are ever in an emergency situation and need to repair a computer system, you might have everything you need to bypass the main system already in your pocket.

To learn more about the Apollo Missions Check out NASAs website .

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