Apollo Guidance Computer Part 9: Apollo Gyroscope

I just scored a genuine Apollo IRIG II gyroscope at the latest RR auction! Let's unbox it, after taking a quick look at more "mundane" military gyros from Ed's collection. In this session we step away from the guidance computer proper and look at its main input sensor, the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). I had resigned myself to use a lesser gyro with the Apollo servo electronics Jimmie had donated to the project. Well, no more, now we can use the real thing.

Extra footage credits:

IMU period footage borrowed from the newly released Draper Labs site Hack the Moon: https://wehackthemoon.com/

Beryllium sphere scenes borrowed from the great Galaxy Quest movie (pray for me to avoid the copyright strike!)

Music by Eon "Ambient Sci Fi Music"
   • Eon - Ambient Sci Fi Music - (royalty...  

Some relevant links:
Playlist of the restoration series:    • Apollo Guidance Computer Restoration  
Block I AGC period documentary:    • MIT Science Reporter—"Computer for Ap...  
Inertial navigation system documentary:    • Видео  
Schematics: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/links....
and: https://archive.org/details/agc_handb...
Mike's AGC backplane viewer: http://apolloguidance.computer/200310...
AGC software repo: https://github.com/virtualagc/virtualagc
The Ultimate Apollo Guidance Computer Talk:    • 34C3 -  The Ultimate Apollo Guidance ...