Loading...Knitting is a very popular pastime for people all over the world. And while homemade sweaters and scarfs are great, knitting isn’t known to be an overwhelmingly useful skill to have unless you’re, well, knitting an item of clothing. But, for a brief period in the mid 20th century, knitting was skill that just so happened to help the US government get Apollo 11 mission successfully to the moon and back.
Yes, knitting helped win the Space Race. In the very interesting video above by SciShow, Hank Green explains how, in the absence of advanced computers, NASA found a light and secure way to encode the programs helping run the ship taking Neil Armstrong and the rest of the crew to the moon. This alternative way involved using knitted wires and magnets as transistors, literally knitting out the code running the ship. As it turns out, while it later because obsolete in computing, knitting kept the crew of Apollo 11 alive during one of the proudest moments in American history.