Making Core Memory: Design Inquiry into Gendered Legacies of Engineering and Craftwork
summary
Design research rebuilds Apollo core rope memory as an electronic quilt composed from hand-assembled patch kits (cardboard looms, beads replacing 1960s ferrite cores) and runs participatory workshops; each sewn square triggers archival audio and automated tweets. The team reproduces millimeter-scale weaving, shows that weaving—not just circuitry—was the pivotal innovation, documents that original planes took about eight weeks to weave and that single-line errors could take days to fix, and surfaces gendered, embodied labor previously missing from histories.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:36What is Innovation
- 1:21Moon Machines
- 2:08The LOL Method
- 2:26Richard Button
- 2:51Core Memory
- 3:12Apollo Guidance Computer
- 4:27What Can We Learn
- 6:01Participatory Workshops
- 6:14Patch Kits
- 6:28AC Sparkplug
- 6:58Tweets
- 7:15Helen Remick
- 8:31Designing the patches
- 8:46At one meeting
- 10:44Squares
- 11:12Patches
- 12:13Language
- 12:36Frederick Great Dill
- 13:48Public Narratives
- 14:27Lisa Nakamura
- 14:54Closing Themes
- 16:27Challenging the Past
- 17:28Conclusion
- 17:48Questions
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