From Carbon-Arc Lamps to the Space Race
The story begins with Philco, founded in 1892 to produce carbon arc lamps before shifting into battery, radio and television production. In 1953, Philco engineers invented the surface barrier transistor, the first high-frequency transistor that enabled the development of high-speed computers. Philco’s effort to miniaturize and perfect the transistor led to work with the U.S. Military and NASA, but by 1960 financial difficulties forced the company to seek an outside buyer.
Looking to expand its product offerings beyond the automobile industry, Ford was intrigued by the access to new and innovative technologies engineered by Philco. It purchased the company in 1961 and Ford transferred its Aeronutronic Division to a new entity it called Philco-Ford.
In 1963, the company went head-to-head against tech giants like IBM, RCA, Lockheed, Hughes Aircraft and AT&T in a bid to implement the Mission Control Center at the new Manned Space Center in Houston. Although Philco-Ford was considered an underdog in the process, it was ultimately awarded the role as prime contractor.
“Had it not been for the merger with Ford, the company most likely would not have been considered for the job because of the magnitude of the engineering resources required,” Walter LaBerge, manager of Philco-Ford Houston Operations, noted in an oral history recounting the project.
Building What Had Never Been Built Before
The job responsibilities for Philco-Ford were immense, encompassing the design of hardware and software systems to solve problems that had never been experienced before, plus manufacturing, installation, start-up and testing of the control center, including data and control links to NASA’s remote tracking sites.
“In short, what NASA needed on the ground to assure a landing on the moon in the 60s was a major computer-assisted decision-making capability which no one had when Philco-Ford received the contract,” reads a company document from the time.
The Mission Control Center was completed in about two years – just in time to monitor the Gemini 3 mission in March of 1965 – and was fully functional a few months later when all mission control operations were moved from Cape Kennedy to Houston’s Manned Space Center.
In addition to designing and building out the control center, Philco-Ford provided technical and engineering support personnel during construction and ongoing operations. The system designs were updated for each mission, some of which required as many as 2 million wiring changes. Other statistics from Mission Control are just as staggering now as when they were installed more than 50 years ago.
More than 1,500 different items of telemetry data – from the astronaut’s health to the results of tests to flight data – flowed into the center simultaneously.
The Mission Control Center housed the largest assembly of television switching equipment in the world.
More than 60,000 miles of wiring were laid and maintained to continue operations.
Five IBM 360/75 mainframe computers sent data to more than 1,300 indicator switches to be monitored by mission flight controllers.
The Journey to the Moon
While Philco-Ford was involved with all of the Apollo missions, two stand out for their complexity.