Minuteman D-17b: The Desktop Computer Was Born in an ICBM

In the early 1960s when computers were typically the size of a car, the USAF took on the seemingly impossible task of cramming one into a missile. That missile was the Minuteman was an entirely new concept: a small solid fuelled rocket able to independently steer itself to the target. The resulting D-17b computer was so small for the time, I argue it may have been the first desktop computer.

The debt imposed on us all by nuclear weapons will never be paid off in full. But Minuteman became Minotaur, Polaris gave us GPS and Titan became Gemini. The guidance computers for all of these systems went on to evolve into the modern PC.

3D animation by Artem Tatarchenko:
  / artem.iskustvo  

Sources:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/axthi6...

Simulator here (warning, it's not very good):
https://github.com/lambdaBoost/d-17b_...

Playlist for all public domain footage used in this video:
   • minuteman-sources  

Summary of why I no longer use Unity. For some reason a few people took offence to that when I mentioned it previously. I had no idea people were 'territorial' about gaming engines:
   • Unity's Plan Won't Work, but Someone Else'...  

00:00 Intro
01:35 Background
05:40 PART 1: The First ICBMs
09:49 The Need for a Guidance Computer
18:07 Launch Sequence
24:32 D-17b Physical Configuration
36:00 D-17s given to Universities
41:45 PART 2: The D-17b Architecture
58:07 Simulated Programming Examples
1:06:10 Conclusions