10 ms·

I wish the article got into more of the technical details behind how this actually worked. I find it absolutely jaw-droopingly incredible that they were able to

I wish the article got into more of the technical details behind how this actually worked. I find it absolutely jaw-droopingly incredible that they were able to shoot gigabytes of essentially IMAX-quality negatives, develop them in flight (which requires temperatures of around 20ºC for all of the materials involved—Edit: they didn't do this because it would've been too difficult, and ended up using a mostly dry development process. See Edit link), scan them(!!!), and then radio them back to the earth. I would find this amazing today, and all of this happened in the 1960s! Edit here's a little more information: http://www.moonviews.com/2012/06/lunar-orbiters-classified-heritage.html http://www.moonviews.com/2012/06/lunar-orbiters-classified-h..., and the link from there to http://www.nro.gov/history/csnr/programs/docs/prog-hist-01.pdf http://www.nro.gov/history/csnr/programs/docs/prog-hist-01.p... contains the technical details on the camera I was after. Amazing stuff.

tajen 8y ago
The most amazing point about landing on the moon in 1969 is that they had to program everything with... negative timestamps. Of course it’s a joke but it highlights how early it was in the history of technology.
- jacobush 8y ago
  ... how. I don't get it.
  - _hardwaregeek 8y ago
    I'm guessing it's a bad joke about Unix time (starts in 1970)
    - dboreham 8y ago
      Except it's a really good joke.
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    It’s about the unix epoch starting in 1970. -_-
  - ejolto 8y ago
    Unix time starts counting upwards from zero on January 1st 1970. It's a joke. If they had Unix computers in the lander they would have had to use negative time since the first moon landing happened in 1969.
    - Scarblac 8y ago
      In Vernor Vinge's far future novel _A Deepness in the Sky_, there is a mention of a "programmer-archaeologist" who digs deep into layers and layers of legacy software of spaceships; it's tens of thousands of years of stuff built on top of each other. It's mentioned that the deepest layers count time in seconds from the moment that humanity first landed on the moon of its home planet.
      - owenversteeg 8y ago
        I very highly recommend that book, by the way. My favorite science fiction book I've ever read. Anyone else love it?
        mbroncano 8y ago
        I’m currently reading the book precisely based on a recommendation from HN. It’s a great book indeed.
        GeekyBear 8y ago
        I would also recommend Vernor Vinge's earlier work, A Fire Upon the Deep. It features a galaxy wide group of alien civilizations that communicate by means of a system that greatly resembles Usenet newsgroups. It either won or was nominated for most of the major science fiction awards.
        owenversteeg 8y ago
        Oh, I actually confused the two! A Fire Upon the Deep is my all time favorite, A Deepness in the Sky is close behind though. I've been looking for books with similar ideas for a long time... would you (or anyone else) know any? The ideas in the two books are really amazing.
  - dandandan 8y ago
    The UNIX epoch is midnight, January 1st, 1970 while the landing on the moon was 1969-07-20.
    - marsRoverDev 8y ago
      NASA / ESA epoch is 1 January 1958: https://public.ccsds.org/Pubs/301x0b4e1.pdf https://public.ccsds.org/Pubs/301x0b4e1.pdf
    - emmelaich 8y ago
      > he UNIX epoch is midnight, January 1st, 1970 in UTC.
    - phyzome 8y ago
      But after 10,000 years (or whatever) that distinction might be lost.
- jankotek 8y ago
  Negative timestamps are used in astronomy all the time.
- rubidium 8y ago
  It's strange to me that you talk about 1969 as early in the "history of technology". We had the wheel, bridges, steam engine, cars, refrigerators, air-conditioning, nuclear power, early robotic manufacturing, computers, and a nascent internet.
  - mseebach 8y ago
    Parent obviously meant "history of computer-technology".
raverbashing 8y ago
Now, I'm interested in how they did the degraded images at the time. Digitally? Or just shot the original photos with a bad camera and lighting?
- acqq 8y ago
  It was all analog at the time, and much faster -- processing that amount of data would take decades at that time if done digitally -- for those who were involved it was a child's play to degrade the signals they've spent so much energy to configure with proper timings and responses. Imagine the guys making circuits, turning dials while looking at their oscilloscopes. If you're old enough to remember VCRs, consider: VCRs were also fully analog. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Yeah, I think you're right, just add some noise and non-linear effects and you have your degraded image. The comparison with VCR makes sense.
    - acqq 8y ago
      In analog, you typically don't degrade with the "noise" but with the reduced "bandwidth" (e.g. filters) -- the details can be wiped out in "real time." What in digital you get by "increasing JPG compression" and waiting for the CPU to process everything, can be in analog smoothly achieved with only a condenser and a resistor.
      - raverbashing 8y ago
        Agreed but if you see the picture comparison between the earthrise photos (good/degraded) you see two things: there's a "scan pattern" where different vertical lines have different brightness/gains. Also highlights and dark areas are more contrasted than the good version. They might have added some filtering to the signal, but from the photo, that's not the most important artifact that was added.
lurcio 8y ago
yes, not credible.
StevePerkins 8y ago
> "I would find this amazing today, and all of this happened in the 1960s!" If bowling alleys didn't already exist... and you pitched me the idea of fully automated systems to collect and re-rack pins and return 15-lb balls to the player after each and every throw... I would probably say that's either impossible or at least impractical at scale. 19th and 20th century engineering is amazing. Today, if I can't conceive of writing it as a mobile app than I just shrug.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  I have a feeling that a lot of people today, confronted with the problem of designing a bowling alley, would go straight for a video camera, a robotic arm to pick up the pins and put them back in their spots, and machine learning to glue it together. I wonder how the cost, reliability, and speed of that would compare to the mechanical solutions. There are a couple bowling alley rerack machine horror stories somewhere on r/talesfromtechsupport.
  - cirgue 8y ago
    Today, the focus seems to be on making sure that a product/system is easy to modify, integrate, or tear down completely instead of saying 'we need to build a system that can do x and only ever x really fast and cheap for a long time". We don't build three-decade systems in the tech industry, we build six-month systems.
    - balabaster 8y ago
      What's crazy about that is that some of those 6 month systems, which were designed at the time to be a throwaway, just to get by, are still in production 26 years later and causing all kinds of problems.
    - mseebach 8y ago
      That's because we predominantly build software, which has the distinct benefit that it can be changed. If ten-pin bowling goes out of fashion in favour of eleven-pin bowling, your three-decade system goes in the landfill. Your six-month gets an OTA update.
ghaff 8y ago
If you want a really fascinating story, check out faxes from the far side. [1] tl;dr The US sent spy balloons over the USSR, many of which were captured. For their probe to the "dark side" of the moon, the Soviets used this film which was processed in the satellite and then essentially faxed back to earth. But, hey, Silicon Valley is really good at ad tech. :-) [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-side/ https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-side/
Aloha 8y ago
I have one word for you - Polaroid. Polaroid had really high resolution, a mostly dry development process, and was simple enough to be done by anyone. 20th Century Engineering is amazing.
- Finnucane 8y ago
  I was just thinking that the positive-negative developing system described in the linked document sounded not entirely unlike the one Polaroid developed for their cameras, in particular the Type 55 sheets.
  - Aloha 8y ago
    Polaroid is also interesting, because almost all of their color processes are extremely fade resistant and color stable, which is more than can be said for any other wet film process, with the exception of Kodachrome and Cibachrome/ilfachrome dye sublimation prints.
dghughes 8y ago
Wasn't the facsimile machine invented in the late 1800s? Lots of weird things have existed way before it seems to have been possible. This: https://www.damninteresting.com/nugget/the-fax-machines-of-the-1800s/ https://www.damninteresting.com/nugget/the-fax-machines-of-t...

tajen 8y ago

The most amazing point about landing on the moon in 1969 is that they had to program everything with... negative timestamps. Of course it’s a joke but it highlights how early it was in the history of technology.

jacobush 8y ago
... how. I don't get it.
- _hardwaregeek 8y ago
  I'm guessing it's a bad joke about Unix time (starts in 1970)
  - dboreham 8y ago
    Except it's a really good joke.
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  It’s about the unix epoch starting in 1970. -_-
- ejolto 8y ago
  Unix time starts counting upwards from zero on January 1st 1970. It's a joke. If they had Unix computers in the lander they would have had to use negative time since the first moon landing happened in 1969.
  - Scarblac 8y ago
    In Vernor Vinge's far future novel _A Deepness in the Sky_, there is a mention of a "programmer-archaeologist" who digs deep into layers and layers of legacy software of spaceships; it's tens of thousands of years of stuff built on top of each other. It's mentioned that the deepest layers count time in seconds from the moment that humanity first landed on the moon of its home planet.
    - owenversteeg 8y ago
      I very highly recommend that book, by the way. My favorite science fiction book I've ever read. Anyone else love it?
      - mbroncano 8y ago
        I’m currently reading the book precisely based on a recommendation from HN. It’s a great book indeed.
      - GeekyBear 8y ago
        I would also recommend Vernor Vinge's earlier work, A Fire Upon the Deep. It features a galaxy wide group of alien civilizations that communicate by means of a system that greatly resembles Usenet newsgroups. It either won or was nominated for most of the major science fiction awards.
        owenversteeg 8y ago
        Oh, I actually confused the two! A Fire Upon the Deep is my all time favorite, A Deepness in the Sky is close behind though. I've been looking for books with similar ideas for a long time... would you (or anyone else) know any? The ideas in the two books are really amazing.
- dandandan 8y ago
  The UNIX epoch is midnight, January 1st, 1970 while the landing on the moon was 1969-07-20.
  - marsRoverDev 8y ago
    NASA / ESA epoch is 1 January 1958: https://public.ccsds.org/Pubs/301x0b4e1.pdf https://public.ccsds.org/Pubs/301x0b4e1.pdf
  - emmelaich 8y ago
    > he UNIX epoch is midnight, January 1st, 1970 in UTC.
  - phyzome 8y ago
    But after 10,000 years (or whatever) that distinction might be lost.
jankotek 8y ago
Negative timestamps are used in astronomy all the time.
rubidium 8y ago
It's strange to me that you talk about 1969 as early in the "history of technology". We had the wheel, bridges, steam engine, cars, refrigerators, air-conditioning, nuclear power, early robotic manufacturing, computers, and a nascent internet.
- mseebach 8y ago
  Parent obviously meant "history of computer-technology".

raverbashing 8y ago

Now, I'm interested in how they did the degraded images at the time. Digitally? Or just shot the original photos with a bad camera and lighting?

acqq 8y ago
It was all analog at the time, and much faster -- processing that amount of data would take decades at that time if done digitally -- for those who were involved it was a child's play to degrade the signals they've spent so much energy to configure with proper timings and responses. Imagine the guys making circuits, turning dials while looking at their oscilloscopes. If you're old enough to remember VCRs, consider: VCRs were also fully analog. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Yeah, I think you're right, just add some noise and non-linear effects and you have your degraded image. The comparison with VCR makes sense.
  - acqq 8y ago
    In analog, you typically don't degrade with the "noise" but with the reduced "bandwidth" (e.g. filters) -- the details can be wiped out in "real time." What in digital you get by "increasing JPG compression" and waiting for the CPU to process everything, can be in analog smoothly achieved with only a condenser and a resistor.
    - raverbashing 8y ago
      Agreed but if you see the picture comparison between the earthrise photos (good/degraded) you see two things: there's a "scan pattern" where different vertical lines have different brightness/gains. Also highlights and dark areas are more contrasted than the good version. They might have added some filtering to the signal, but from the photo, that's not the most important artifact that was added.

lurcio 8y ago

yes, not credible.

StevePerkins 8y ago

> "I would find this amazing today, and all of this happened in the 1960s!" If bowling alleys didn't already exist... and you pitched me the idea of fully automated systems to collect and re-rack pins and return 15-lb balls to the player after each and every throw... I would probably say that's either impossible or at least impractical at scale. 19th and 20th century engineering is amazing. Today, if I can't conceive of writing it as a mobile app than I just shrug.

wlesieutre 8y ago
I have a feeling that a lot of people today, confronted with the problem of designing a bowling alley, would go straight for a video camera, a robotic arm to pick up the pins and put them back in their spots, and machine learning to glue it together. I wonder how the cost, reliability, and speed of that would compare to the mechanical solutions. There are a couple bowling alley rerack machine horror stories somewhere on r/talesfromtechsupport.
- cirgue 8y ago
  Today, the focus seems to be on making sure that a product/system is easy to modify, integrate, or tear down completely instead of saying 'we need to build a system that can do x and only ever x really fast and cheap for a long time". We don't build three-decade systems in the tech industry, we build six-month systems.
  - balabaster 8y ago
    What's crazy about that is that some of those 6 month systems, which were designed at the time to be a throwaway, just to get by, are still in production 26 years later and causing all kinds of problems.
  - mseebach 8y ago
    That's because we predominantly build software, which has the distinct benefit that it can be changed. If ten-pin bowling goes out of fashion in favour of eleven-pin bowling, your three-decade system goes in the landfill. Your six-month gets an OTA update.

ghaff 8y ago

If you want a really fascinating story, check out faxes from the far side. [1] tl;dr The US sent spy balloons over the USSR, many of which were captured. For their probe to the "dark side" of the moon, the Soviets used this film which was processed in the satellite and then essentially faxed back to earth. But, hey, Silicon Valley is really good at ad tech. :-) [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-side/ https://www.damninteresting.com/faxes-from-the-far-side/

Aloha 8y ago

I have one word for you - Polaroid. Polaroid had really high resolution, a mostly dry development process, and was simple enough to be done by anyone. 20th Century Engineering is amazing.

Finnucane 8y ago
I was just thinking that the positive-negative developing system described in the linked document sounded not entirely unlike the one Polaroid developed for their cameras, in particular the Type 55 sheets.
- Aloha 8y ago
  Polaroid is also interesting, because almost all of their color processes are extremely fade resistant and color stable, which is more than can be said for any other wet film process, with the exception of Kodachrome and Cibachrome/ilfachrome dye sublimation prints.

dghughes 8y ago

Wasn't the facsimile machine invented in the late 1800s? Lots of weird things have existed way before it seems to have been possible. This: https://www.damninteresting.com/nugget/the-fax-machines-of-the-1800s/ https://www.damninteresting.com/nugget/the-fax-machines-of-t...