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tonyPick writes:

Spotted at Andrew Plotkin's blog is an interesting article on the two word control panel in the original Apollo Guidance Computer, which talks about the use of "VERB" and "NOUN" controls on the original instrument panel.

This then links to a Discover Magazine Article How Verbs and Nouns Got Apollo to the Moon, which describes how the Apollo astronauts interacted with the guidance computer by:

[...] entering Noun-Verb combination commands in lieu of a string of written words. To keep it simple, the commands were written out in short hand. For example, V37N31E stood for Verb 37 Noun 31 and Enter to get the program running.

[...] It might not seem like it, but the Noun-Verb arrangement and verbiage comes from the fact that the computer engineers who built and used the Apollo guidance computer were also inventing it as they went along. They didn't have backgrounds in computer engineering because the field didn't exist then as it does today. But they all spoke English, so carrying over the same language structure simplified things for everyone. It's a perfect example of the brilliant simplicity that went into so much engineering of the Apollo era.

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