In 2022, the family of David Hoag gave a special gyroscope to the MIT Museum. Hoag was the lead designer and project manager for the group at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now Draper Laboratory) that designed the guidance and navigation instruments that enabled Americans to send humans to the moon and back. This instrument which actually flew on the famous "everything but the moon landing" Apollo 8 mission, reveals some important but unknown stories (think problems with ball bearings that cost $20 million to fix) as well insights about how individuals dedicated to a common purpose, combining their personal "superpowers" were able to solve a mind-mindbogglingly difficult challenge. Deborah Douglas has been interested in aerospace history for forty years. Her passion is sharing stories about the history of technology. Amazingly, Douglas’ first job was at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, and she has done stints at the NASA Langley Research Center, and Science History Institute before joining the MIT Museum in 1999 as the inaugural curator of science and technology. She writes books and articles, curates exhibitions, contributes to documentary videos, teaches a class on MIT history and is privileged to work as part of a talented team who care for 1.5 million artifacts in the MIT Museum’s collections.
" This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx