Radiation Inc Logic Modules

Acquired From Jimmie Loocke 

Date acquired 16th December 2019

Collection # -TSM044.

The start of the Apollo program in the early sixties predated lot of things that we know and have come to take for granted in modern life. One of these items being the Integrated Circuit, or as is commonly known the computer chip. Radiation Incorporated was founded in 1950, in the town of Melbourne, Florida. Over the next few years Radiation achieved a remarkable reputation in many fields, including Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) Telemetry, Instrumentation Systems, large tracking antennas, radar reflectivity, and space hardware, including some still on the moon. A subsidiary of the parent company was the Radiation Products Division and they produced what were modular digital building blocks. There was an array of them including logic gates counters to name a few. They were plug and play and could be purchased with mother boards and racks. This system allowed a system to be designed and easily assembled and modified if required thereafter. The assembled units were used for running tests and simulations.

The modules in the collection were a gift to me from Jimmie Wayne Loocke, and were given when I purchased the flown module from AS-202. He obtained them as part of the NASA surplus he purchased from a scrap dealer in the mid 70’s. Some of them are marked with the distinctive triangular NASA quality control stamp which may indicate that they were used in some capacity

A copy of the Module brochure from 1963

Here a test board is shown with modules attached and at the top are indicators bulbs. Outputs from the system being tested would come to the board and through the logic gates and depending upon what lights were illuminated the correct or incorrect operation of the system would be shown