How Mission Control's Big Displays Worked

[@ramosel]

I had to go give blood this morning... sitting in the lab, unaware I was doing it, I started humming the tune to your "In the Lab" intro song. A lady a good bit older than my 60 years and sitting a social distance away leaned over and said "I just love her". Caught off-guard, I said "excuse me?". She retorted "Fran Blanche!! You were humming her tune!". "OH, yes I was... well, I am 'In the Lab'". She finished with "She's just cute as a button and smart as a whip!". I agreed with her and she offered me an air fist bump. You have fans in the Sierras.

[@chriswalford4161]

Perfect! And congrats (from a U.K. blood donor).

[@m.t-thoughts8919]

*_SIMP!_*

[@illustriouschin]

This happened to me as well but in my mind.

[@snowtoaster7154]

I live in Truckee. I own and operate a business I inherited from my Grandfather. When I'm not snowboarding, I'm in school working on a graduate degree. It's a part of the conditions he set on my Trust funding completely. I have learned a ton about electronics and troubleshooting from watching Fran. She is an inspiration to all women. I often share my evenings with my Grandmother and we sometimes watch Fran's videos. My Grandmother was the lady you met at the Sutter lab. She just told me about it last Friday night so when I saw this, I laughed and called her immediately. She was so amazed I found you wrote about the encounter. She had said you were "quite dashing" and she talked to your girlfriend the whole time you were giving blood. Thanks, you made her day, twice now. Dr. Bright, get a life, INCEL!

[@m.t-thoughts8919]

@@snowtoaster7154 Lol, you don't have a life has it seems. Wenn someone writes words big, thick and in cursive it's usually a joke. In my case it was defintely a joke...

[@AppliedScience]

Really nice detective work! I had no idea those graphic displays were so mechanical! Thanks!

[@michaelfingers7726]

From 8:00 on my jaw dropped and at 8:09 I exclaimed "WHAAT" at the description of how they were "making the sausage".

[@-Christoph]

I didn't even know they existed. But then again, that was well before my time. 😏

[@dishmanw]

Makes me think of some of the old arcade games which used a combination of mechanics, mirrors and lights.

[@AlanTaylorCRSmusicproduction]

This is why I love KZbin. I can watch niche documentaries on stuff that you just can't get anywhere else. Bravo Fran and keep these Apollo videos coming.

[@flymypg]

As a kid in the '60's I had an enormous "coffee table" book that went into deep detail on all the Mission Control technology, with lots of full-page images and drawings. A search of my favorite used book sites failed to find any reference to it, but I'll keep looking. I remember seeing flow-charts for software, sections of operating procedures, and notes from meetings.

[@javaguru7141]

That's incredible! I'm sure there's a copy of this out there somewhere, still.

[@danielpirone8028]

My dad had one too. Sadly long gone.

[@boballmendinger3799]

That sounds awesome! I'd really like to know the title, when you find it.

[@KaitlinGaspar]

keep hunting friends! i’ll be keeping an eye out at thrift store book sections hehe

[@peterblackmore7560]

In Australia the GE Talaria Light Valve projectors (as shown on the Plan drawing at 5:32) were used for large events in the late 70s/early eighties by HSV 7, one of the major TV networks. There were artifacts of the NTSC signal visible as a horizontal purple and vertical green line (or the other way around). These were masked out using a piece of 2x1 timer holding a cardboard mask about 500mm in front of the lens. I was told that these were initially developed for NASA for the Mission Control rooms. I had forgotten about these projectors.

[@elkabong6429]

Hey Fran, wonderful stuff! I was an audio-visual technician and video projectionist by trade for over thirty years in NYC from 1978-2010 and when I started out, video projection was quite different compared to now. On the schematic you provide, you will notice, on the left side (projecting onto the Right Center Screen) a "GE Talaria" which was a large screen video projector that replaced the Eidophor originally used. The Talaria was also a "valve" projector that used a spinning disc of oil, but they were much more compact and were built in a modular fashion, that enabled a projectionist/tech to swap out boards quickly if needed. Thanks, as always, for your in-depth look into the history of technology that we all take for granted.

[@sharplessguy]

I started working on video projectors around 1984. I have used Eidophors and GE's Talaria and went to titusville in 1987 to become a factory service technician on ESP's Aquastars and had the pleasure of training with several of the video engineers who were projectionist for NASA at Cape Canaveral. The Eidophor used a scanned electron beam to deform a coating of oil on a rotating glass disc. The depth of the scan controlled the intensity. The output was blocked by schlieren optics unless the light was refracted around the output optics. It was a pretty brilliant idea and worked well but was a massive machine that required lots of maintenance and power for not a huge amount of light output. A full color Eidophor weighed in at close to 1,000 lbs including the lamp housing and associated electronics. And they weren't quiet either. A GE talaria used essentially the same process but was a lot smaller. At some point Talaria replaced the mechanical slide system used in the Johnson Space Center's mission control (if you look closely at the first set of drawings you'll see they plainly show several Talaria in their plans. Somewhere I still have my factory certification from training in Syracuse to repair and operate the GE Talaria pj5055 and mp8000 models.

[@computersarebad]

The technology sounds very similar to that used for "Iconorama," a DoD projection plotter map display installed in certain military command facilities, especially for air defense. It is loosely replicated by "the big board" in Dr. Strangelove amongst other movie versions, but amusingly the real deal was actually more futuristic than what you see in that film - I don't think the studio could design such a complex projection system, even five years later. I don't know a lot about the exact technology employed, but it was a map "background" projected off a slide and a mechanical plotter using the same method of scraping off a metallic film. Some were quite small, TV sized by today's standards, but some facilities like NORAD were equipped with one similar in size to mission control's systems - although I believe theirs was actually front-projection, I suppose the room was already dark since they used to keep radar scopes in darkened rooms so you could see the phosphor decay for longer. The cool thing about the Iconorama is that they were essentially remote-controlled using teletype so that equipment at NORAD could drive displays in other locations. However, I do not think that they were as sophisticated, overall, as the mission control system. I have never seen mention of movable icons, for example. The Iconoramas were built by a company called Fenske, Federick and Miller that is long obscure but seems to have focused on electromechanical projection equipment. They were sold on the open market but I don't think there were many buyers besides DOD and a few DOD contractors. So I have no idea if there was shared technology between the Iconorama and the mission control displays (seems likely considering the significant shared work between NASA and DOD) or if the two companies arrived at a similar approach independently. Eidophors are also extremely interesting but there's not a lot of information about them and even fewer remaining examples. Somewhere I once read a story from someone who operated the Eidophor at a stadium, I believe the Seattle Kingdome, about exactly how alarming it was when one of the bulbs exploded - apparently this was a not so infrequent problem with them and called for a sturdy enclosure.

[@JasperJanssen]

In a back projection system like this, you could do moving icons pretty easily: just put a separate smallish projector on servos. The scraping tech is only necessary to have a line with historical data.

[@derkeksinator17]

There's a teardown of one of these on yt, can't remember which channel though.

[@sadiqmohamed681]

Fascinating stuff, Fran. I watched all that going on in the late 60s through to the early 90s before I was able to find out how it was done. When I was at the BBC we used Eidophors for backprojecting the scenes outside "moving" cars. Took a lot of time to set-up. The first one I saw in daylight was at the Bath Blues Festival in 1970. If you look on YT for Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" you can see it in wide-shots shots of the stage. I'm in that audience somewhere! The other stuff with the "slide" projectors is just extraordinary. You make the point that this is all viewable in standard office lighting. The Eidophor was designed to be viewable in daylight. The electron beam effectively made relief map of the image on the oil surface, and the projector light reflected off this. Later colour versions use 3 sets of this! They were superseded by the Jumbotron, which I seem to remember had "pixels" which were small crt's which just displayed a blank raster and had colour filters in front. Video walls using multiple narrow border TV displays had appeared by the late 70s, but were not bright enough for daylight, so Eidophor and Jumbotron had it to themselves. I remember being in Atlanta in 1990 for the NAB Convention and people saying "Have you seen the new Sony projector?" They were projecting a 100 inch display in daylight using a new sort of video projector. I think this was the DLP with micromirrors. Nobody would tell us the cost, but a friend from Panasonic reckoned about $1 million! I can't imagine what it cost to build the set-up in mission control. Now the whole thing can be done with either large screens or HD video projectors. In 1992 I was introduced to a 42" plasma display from Panasonic. It was in two units, the display, and a 4 foot rack of drivers and power supplies. They told me the prototypes had cost about $250K each. The current equivalent 42" 4K HDR is about £699 from my local John Lewis!

[@ethanpschwartz]

The Jumbotron actually used only 16 floodlight CRTs to run all of its pixels

[@dentakuweb]

Mike Harrison did an interesting teardown of Jumbotron module. kzbin.info/www/bejne/d5TPqHtsacp0obc

[@jishcatg]

The "relief" of the image in the oil you mention is reminiscent of the tiny mirrors in DLP displays.

[@greenaum]

DLP was invented by Texas Instruments in 1987, and wasn't fully developed and sold until 10 years later. Micromirrors are a MEMS technology, which was really cutting-edge stuff in the late 1990s. I think gigantic TVs have benefitted partly from the smartphone revolution, where so many high-pixel-density LCDs need to be made. In the factory they cut LCD panels to the size they need them. So the process is the same for big and small screens. As quality has improved, dead pixels are almost a thing of the past, so ever larger LCD screens are practical. Microchip technology too must have contributed, as clean rooms get better at etching ever tinier details onto silicon, so techniques improve for all sorts of related micro-machining. My point is LCDs didn't improve in a vacuum (ho ho!). They improved at a really fast rate, but I think mostly as a beneficiary of other larger technology markets, rather than purely through demand for massive tellies. You could get stupidly large TVs in the 1980s if you were willing to pay for a rear-projection TV, but nobody did because they were too expensive. People will have silly-large TVs now but mostly because they cost so little.

[@klif_n]

Fran, this is just wonderful. I've always wondered how they did this. It's really pretty amazing how much work went into all this. Certainly we have it easy now.

[@guffaw1711]

I'm really starting to dig these old display and screen technology videos. It's becoming a theme, this is some important documentation work of tech history you're doing. I would suggest putting them all in a playlist.

[@ahensley]

This is my favorite kind of Fran video, a massive deep dive into something I've always wondered about and didn't have the first clue how to research. Also the amount of footage collected here of those gorgeous plots is really wonderful. That stuff is usually only shown for a quick cut in most documentaries. That was awesome to see. Huge thumbs up!

[@robinosborne266]

Hi Fran, I used to really enjoy your videos and would dearly love to follow them again but unfortunately after recent ear surgery which was unsuccessful I am now profoundly deaf. If you could please turn on the subtitle (closed caption) option on your videos it would help people like myself appreciate your content. I have requested a few of the other channels switch the option on and it has made a massive difference. Thank you in advance

[@TinHatRanch]

It’s very rare I️ see a video on an Apollo topic I️ know little about, let alone a topic I’ve never thought of. Great job!

[@Petertronic]

I've wanted to know how those Apollo era screen displays worked for years! Loved this video.

[@gmeast]

... well ... as a kid, I always wondered why/how Mission Control had such big, wall-mounted color displays (appearing to be ahead of the times) when no one else did. Thanks Fran !

[@kentkacs3140]

This is fascinating! It's an aspect of the missions to which most don't even give a second thought, yet just these screens themselves were a miracle of engineering.

[@joeemenaker]

The resourcefulness of the engineers of the day continues to astound me.

[@Dolvid]

This will go down as one of my favorites. Thank you for your hard work in getting this to us.

[@jts3339]

Thank you for all of your hard work on this fascinating presentation, Fran. I was an engineer at Dosimeter Corporation of America in the early 1970’s and was blown away by the 1940’s radiation detection technology that was still state-of-the-art 40 years later. The ingenuity of the engineers who invented the electro-mechanical methods to accomplish what can now be simply accomplished with software is unknown to most people. I’m awed by how they managed to get the job done with the relatively low technology of the era. I spent many hours pouring over the (hand drawn) drawing files to get insight into the design process that made these elegant and accurate electro-mechanical instruments possible. We owe so much to the unknown engineering giants of this era.

[@chrisbeck8182]

I couldn't agree more! I am always amazed when I see 40's/50's vintage high-speed equipment (assembly, packaging, etc.) and realize it's all being controlled by gears, cams, levers and other ingenious mechanical wizardry. At most the "electronics" would have consisted of some rudimentary "ladder logic" using real relays! Many people opine that going to the moon was a huge waste of tax dollars. Yeah, I even wonder what we could have done with that money to the betterment of society, but the reality of it then, as it is now, that money would have only provided temporary benefit. In contrast, the money spent on the moon program is still reaping benefits today from the technology they had to develop 50, 60 years ago in pursuit of the ultimate goal.

[@jts3339]

@@chrisbeck8182 I used to receive a subscription to NASA Spinoff Magazine that featured civilian applications of technology developed for NASA. We are years ahead of where we would be without the technical innovations that were necessary to support the US Space Program.

[@GraemePayne1967Marine]

And remember that in those days all engineering work was done using slide rules ... 3 significant figures of precision. I know that by the early 1970s my father used his slide rule less because he could rent time on a shared computer system. And then the first HP scientific calculator appeared ... once my father tried that I'm not sure he ever used a slide rule again, and certainly not time-shared computers.

[@MattMcIrvin]

@@GraemePayne1967Marine If you needed more precision you could always use mechanical digital calculators, which were slower but often offered 10 or 12 significant digits.

[@dale116dot7]

@@chrisbeck8182 One other slightly more strategic spin-off of Apollo was that the whole program was also statement to the Soviet Union ‘if we can hit a half mile target at 240,000 miles out, we can definitely hit a target of a few hundred feet from a third of the way around the world’. It probably helped keep the peace through deterrence. It might seem a bit dark now, but in the Apollo era we still had the duck-and-cover drills.

[@michaelcarey]

This reminds me of a mechanical "chart plotter" for shipping I saw at the JRC (Japan Radio Company) factory in Mitaka in 1990. By that time, basic CRT chart plotters were being used on fishing boats together with the fledgling GPS system. Before that JRC made mechanical chart plotters that were used with the radio navigation systems of the day (Omega, Loran C, Decca). These were typically used on larger ocean going ships. They were basically a large flat bed pen plotter on which you would lay a marine chart. A physical pen was then moved across the chart, plotting the ships course in real time with data from the radio navigators. There was a calibration procedure where you would let the system know the lat/long limits of the chart and a few reference points along with the charts datum.

[@AdamKnappdoesthings]

But if it broke you’d be left with a map, whereas if the CRT breaks you’re just left with an anchor!

[@GojiraDeMonstah]

THIS IS AWESOME. My parents met in Houston working for NASA during the Apollo program. Every detail of this era was always so fascinating to me. Well done!

[@jonathandill3557]

The artists and draftspeople who made the slides are unsung heroes. It would be awesome to see some of those slides and presumably original drawings used to make them if they still exist.

[@jimsadowski8512]

Great job, Fran. Thanks for all the time you must have spent on this.

[@acamaro5648]

Agree..

[@SueBobChicVid]

That's almost as complex as landing on the moon.

[@1pcfred]

It was all certainly part of the complexity that went into landing on the Moon.

[@ManicSalamander]

You may be right. The math and technology to execute the landing itself may not have had as many moving parts as the display!

[@pauljohnson8002]

Until I saw this, I never thought twice about those displays, and I watched Mercury missions in the 60's. Thank you so much for this. While I never thought to ask, I am very glad that you did.

[@fieldofsky3632]

wow!..... yet another piece of astounding tech endevour in the Apollo years... wow ... complexity on complexity and it worked!

[@ianbcnp]

Nice one Fran - this feels like Fran raised to the Franth power! Absolutely wonderful stuff - answering questions I hadn't even got around to asking. Flight control was such a magical place in my childhood so to hear about the magic behind the magic really is amazing. Thank you - this alone is well worth many months of patreon fivers :-)

[@peterreimer2540]

Was watching a conference where Zubrin was being criticized for his enthusiasm of going to Mars as the main preferred mission for NASA. The young critic tried to make the point that Mars focus would not see the benefits that Zubrin espouses. It is this wonderfully imaginative tech that came out of this era, its' lasting usefulness that proves that the US can achieve amazing things when given a goal and focus. That control room was made at a time when television displays and card read computers were state of the art. Amazing tech. Thanks Fran!

[@1pcfred]

Apollo was an ideological project. We did it to prove we were better than the communists. They launched Sputnik so we put men on the Moon. It was either that or blow up the planet. Those were the options available. I like to think today that we chose wisely. Sometimes I do have my doubts though.

[@fluffyblue4006]

I've never given this much thought but indeed, in that time there were no big computer or TV displays, let alone, computers with enough power to produce such images. Thanks for the insights. Very well put together. Amazing projection tech. Who would have thought they were using a bunch of projectors, each with their own color, motor-driven scribes and slides. ..amazing..

[@wb5mct]

Fascinating! I toured mission control in the early 70's and the guide explained the operation of the video projectors but I don't remember him talking about the etching system. Thanks for the hard work researching!

[@williamhanna2613]

I'm sure you hear this all the time but I think I love you I can listen to you all day.

[@jukingeo]

Very impressive! I was glued to the screen until the end! I was always curious how these worked as well, since they predated the computer era. While I did know that they were projections, when it came to the more intricately draw items, that I didn't know how was done. So that was a great presentation of how those displays worked. Great job!

[@occamsrayzor]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this wonderfully detailed explanation of the Mission Control screens. I've been a lifelong space geek since I was little kid, devouring news about the Gemini missions. I was twelve years old when Apollo 11 flew, and watched along with many millions of others the live broadcasts, and yet until today I never knew how those big screens worked. I just discovered your channel today, and have been binge watching as much as I can, and every one is a gem!

[@tomohlsson9045]

Wow. Just wow, Fran! Your research and level of detail truly is remarkable. Thank you so much for this!

[@SteveFrenchWoodNStuff]

It never occurred to me how amazing and complex the system might be. Great video!

[@jamesstoneiii7382]

Thanks for doing these old display tech deep dives. This beautiful tech melded art and science in ways that inspired many of us and still seem "magical" today.

[@jonathandill3557]

You can actually find some of the glass slides available for auction online! I don't plan on getting any myself, but cool to know that they still exist and weren't all just tossed.

[@1pcfred]

I bet plenty were tossed while they were making them. Ones that came out somewhat messed up and were just no good.

[@gevmage]

:-O. This is AMAZING. I'm at work at the moment, but when I have time this evening I will be watching this with a fine-toothed comb, maybe twice. WOW.

[@DIY-valvular]

Ten years ago, Dave Jones from EEVBLOG published a video named "How to Entertain a Nerd". That's the way to do it! Thanks Fran!

[@origamimambo545]

Wow! I'm constantly amazed at the mechanical ingenuity of early image making. I've always wondered how that wonderful big picture wall worked. Thank you Fran!

[@simoncorbett1714]

Dear Fran, many thanks for the content, kind regards, Simon

[@WyomingWoodscolt]

I love how you are so smart and yet just say when you are not sure or don't know exactly...too bad so much of your work needs video, you have a great voice for podcast...

[@Fireship1]

Very cool. This has been one of my personal mysteries for a long time. It’s amazing how much work we had to put in back then to make these ideas come to fruition. Technology was limited. But we made it happen!

[@Graham_Wideman]

Wow! This is some classic Frandoc! That tech has just-in-time graphics processing, sprites, color lookup and compositing!

[@genius1a]

The end is genius edited! What a nice find and positioning in the review of the iconic control room display! I would have never thought of a possible tech behind like this. Absolutely stunning!

[@brucegoatly]

That's a great description of a truly astonishing feat of display technology for its time. Thanks, Fran!

[@richard-hawley]

Just to echo many of the comments, that was a really interesting dive into something I always wondered about. Fascinating. Thanks Fran.

[@Alaska_Engineer]

Very thorough review! It’s like you were there! I was an Engineering Team Lead at JSC site operations from 2000-2004. Things were updated by then. Fascinating place to work!

[@xotmatrix]

Thank you, Fran, for answering life-long questions I've had about those NASA displays.

[@michaelcherry8952]

Amazing! This must have been a ton of work to research and suss out. Thank you so much for this. I've never seen such detailed images of Mission Control before. FIVE IBM 360's? WOW! This was a great video. I really enjoyed this video.

[@100SteveB]

That is rather amazing, I never realised just how complex it all was. I would never have guessed there were another two large rooms behind those screens, let alone the complex equipment used. This really does add another level of engineering to all of the missions. Very interesting video indeed. Thanks Fran.

[@f4r__]

Oh my goodness, only a couple of days ago, I was wondering about this exact topic. Crazy timing. Awesome video, too.

[@andyhill242]

Amazing use of the available technology at the time. Thank you for putting in all the work to produce this.

[@KozmykJ]

That's really fascinating Fran. Something so easy to just take for granted under the 'Magic of Television' category.

[@celkat]

Channels like yours make KZbin one of the internet's great sites.

[@thief9001]

This was a really incredible video! I feel like you could make a thick book, just with this as a starting point, having interviews with the people that operated the BAT CAVE, techs who installed it, people talking passionately about just this one little piece of early NASA history. What an amazing glimpse into such an iconic piece of technology. There were so many moving parts to this, all working together it feels like the screen alone is the perfect anology for the space program. I had never heard of that oil based projection method, and the idea of using etched plates as long lasting projection slides is very cool! Thanks for producing this Fran, really great information. Very much appreciated and I'll be sharing this around!

[@dana3179]

Last week, I had the opportunity to see THE Apollo Mission Control Center on a tour out of Space Center Houston. Having this extra understanding of the inner workings made it that much more special. Thank you Fran!

[@dana3179]

(the projector room itself wasn't open for viewing... :( but still!)

[@fazergazer]

One of my favorite nuggets of gold on the KZbins, Fran! Great job here. I learned a lot from this. Much appreciated.

[@ianbell8701]

Wow! I'm not sure which is more impressive; the mission control graphic-display set up or your research Fran. A very interesting video. Thank you very much.

[@gregbear123]

This is an awesome little rabbit hole to go down. The innovation to bring that all together is so cool. Great explanation, Thanks!

[@jameswortley2515]

Frantastic, I love these space videos. Blows my mind on how much stuff went on in the background of these missions. Great job .

[@lajoswinkler]

I always assumed it was projections and even got to the point of considering some kind of etch-a-sketch thing going on, but this video really opened my eyes. Wow, amazing, so complex. Insane background just to make a realtime data display. Thank you for spending time to make this video.

[@dergrinch69]

Thank you! I always asked myself how this was accomplished and this is far more awesome than i thought.

[@rollingtones1]

1:02 one of the most melancholy sights I have ever seen - knowing the range of emotions in that famous room.

[@cliveradvan3414]

Pure brilliance, both the presentation and the engineering being described! I was always curious how NASA were able to display such large displays . Now i know. Thanks Fran.

[@xyz.ijk.]

One of your best -- I've wondered about this for decades!

[@noakeswalker]

Amazing stuff, Fran. That scribing projector must have been developed just for Nasa by Philco presumably - much too costly to do otherwise I'd have thought ... the Bat Cave must have made some racket back there with all that cooling and venting and high power lamps - must have been quite a scene in there :o) I now know how an Eidophor works too. Thanks for making this. Great simulation at the end btw.

[@jrhalabamacustoms5673]

Incredible not only the technology in use, but your research into this. Wow, rabbit hole or not, you ROCK!

[@peterdavey8348]

Great stuff Fran, thanks. Everything about the Apollo program just boggles my mind.

[@theycallmerocko7979]

Really great research work I always wondered how they had those large screen displays. It’s amazing what can be done with very basic electro mechanical technology, and the very early computers of the time, truly mind blowing.

[@bf0189]

One of your best videos by far. Thanks for the technical information I was always curious!

[@jonpardue]

Wow Fran, impressive presentation and description! Another facet of the Apollo program finally explained.

[@henrybecker2842]

Great Job Fran - thanks for doing the research and providing a easy to understand narrative. :-)

[@wrightmf]

Thanks for putting this together. Back in 1995 I contacted Sy Liebergot to invite him as a speaker for 1996 Engineers Week banquet. He suggested the CD-ROM set "Apollo 13: A Race Against Time" by Computer Support Corp. Liebergot was the technical advisor of this set by Arts and Letters. What stood out was diagrams showing the full layout of "Mission Control" which goes beyond that single room we see on TV (known as Mission Operations Control Room, MOCR or "moker"). It also illustrated that batcave projection room plus several other rooms of "backroom guys" i.e. Liebergot as EECOM has a few other guys he talks with on intercom and they have more displays, stripcharts, etc. I'm sure you did your best to find out the details of that batcave, there's gotta be more. Perhaps this will generate interest and maybe some people in Houston will track down those old MOCR guys and their backroom people that are still living. One of them may have a box of documents and diagrams in their garage or basement. Another book Liebergot recommended is "Apollo: Race to the Moon" by Murray and Cox that talked about how Mission Control was arranged. One story mentioned was during a simulation, one of the Sim Sups wanted to kill the monitor for a controller in the front room during a critical part of a mission (i.e. descent). Idea is this controller will tell the guy on the side he has to give up his seat, which will cause that guy to do the same. Other side of the front row (the Trench) was Booster (seat is vacant after Apollo is free from the Saturn V) so these controllers will ripple through. However, the controller instead asked if his screen can be projected to the big board (which the guys in the batcave quickly provided). Rather ingenious way of regaining a lost screen.

[@johanlaurasia]

Fascinating research. Have seen those display basically all my life but never put much thought into how the images were produced. Thanks for such a great video !

[@MRCNC1967]

Thanks for answering a question I always wondered about but had no idea who to ask. Great research, it's with videos like these that one begins to appreciate the work that went into the Apollo program in the background, thank you!

[@JenkinsUSA]

Never thought about this, maybe subconsciously, but thanks for the exploration and share. Fransnating 🎥

[@simonmikkelsen]

Thanks for doing the huge work to show us this. I'm looking forward to the next slide.

[@rubinoangelo]

Hi Fran, thank you letting me discover « THIS AMAZING AND ABSOLUTE ENGINEERING ART !!! ». The mind is boundless 🙏

[@frankowalker4662]

Wow. Fascinating stuff, Fran. You must have spent many, many hours researching this. Thank you.

[@bradboardwell8295]

I just stumbled across your channel and this video by chance….. I had no idea this would be this informative and entertaining to me. You did an absolutely A-MAZ-ING job!!!! Thank you for making and posting this!

[@TheDanno210]

Holy hell that was way more fascinating and interesting than I expected! Very well done Fran!!!

[@user-fd7vt5zx7q]

Very interesting! Thank you... We have very similar lines of curiosity :) makes your detailed explanations very enjoyable to me! Keep up the good work!

[@squiffig]

A mystery solved. This is something that had quietly puzzled me since around about then. Thank you, Fran!

[@cgoad]

Fran that was terrific! I am constantly amazed by what NASA was able to do technologically back then. We view it - wrongly - as so underpowered and clumsy, but it was an engineering triumph. Love these videos - well, all your videos - and I always look forward to your next one. These looks into the space program are fascinating. Thank you so much. Keep up the wonderful work!

[@alpcns]

Excellent! Your in-depth, detailed knowledge, dedication and accuracy for everything Apollo and space exploration is astounding. My hat off.

[@3vi1J]

Wow! I never was quite sure how they were doing this with the technology of the time. What an amazing solution. Thank you for sharing your findings!

[@ThomasGabrielsen]

A very good explanation on how this screen actually worked. I've always thought that they used CRT vector graphics to draw the lines/paths and somehow projected this onto the screens.

[@samheasmanwhite]

I wonder if the scribe plotters might have used a tiny diamond tip embedded in the centre of a sheet of glass to allow shadowless plotting in any direction. It would be much bulkier than an arm, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it anyway since things for the programme tended to be made as versatile as possible.

[@KlausKaiserDB3TK]

My thought as well. The glass plate would guide the diamond tip much more stable and would throw no shadow on the already scribed trace. Also, a thin arm would flex while the diamond would stick, resulting in an artificially jagged curve.

[@samheasmanwhite]

@@KlausKaiserDB3TK Oh yeah, true, especially if the scribe window is as small as the other slides, an arm would have to be tiny.

[@filanfyretracker]

that is pretty neat, for some reason I figured they were using some kind of CRT based projection. And three mainframes to drive it all, In an era where a major corporation having one of them was probably a big deal.

[@KlausKaiserDB3TK]

The eidophor does actually incorporate a CRT - with an oil coated mirror instead of a phosphor coated screen: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor

[@shoofle]

Loved this! Mechatronics are so wild.

[@mikeburch2998]

That was a great video! Your narration an attention to small details really make a difference. The F1 engine video was remarkable as well. Greetings from Arizona.

[@MrChrisStarr]

Wow, a story to be told here! Fascinating, many thanks Fran. Considering the time scales involved it is incredible that the technology lasted into the 80's!

[@DavidHamster88]

I’ve always been curious about this! This system is astounding.

[@topsieBeezelbub]

My father was one of the engineers on the console.. thank you so much.

[@wv838]

Absolutely fascinating, Fran. I've been searching out Apollo footage over the last few weeks thanks to your channel and this video answers a lot of questions. If ever there was a good example of "go big, or go home " - it was Apollo. Thank you!

[@julianr7030]

oh, amazing! I was trying to find out any information about these displays for so long now. thank you

[@robbybobbyhobbies]

First time I've seen one of your videos - immediate subscription. That was outstanding.

[@roberttalada5196]

I think this is the only comprehensive video on this subject. Nice!