ATHENA computer


The UNIVAC Athena computer was the processor for ground commands to the HGM-25A Titan I intercontinental ballistic missile as part of Western Electric's missile guidance system. The Athena was the "first transistorized digital computer to be produced in numbers." Athena, consisting of ten cabinets plus console on a 13.5 by 20 foot floor plan, computed Titan flight data to the necessary burn-out point to start a ballistic trajectory toward the target. On-board Titan attitude control rolled the missile to maintain the missile antenna aligned to the ground antenna. Computer outputs were transmitted to the missile from a ground transmitter a "quarter mile out". Completed in 1957, the Athena weighed.

Design and history

The Athena used a Harvard architecture design with separate data and instruction memories by Seymour Cray at Sperry Rand Corporation and cost about $1,800,000. Used with the computer were the:
The "battleshort" mode prevented fail-safe circuits such as fuses from deactivating the machine e.g., during a missile launch. The last Athena-controlled launch was a Thor-Agena missile launched in 1972 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the last of over 400 missile flights using the Athena. The 26 Athena computers, when declared surplus by the Federal Government, went to various United States universities. The one at Carnegie was used as an undergraduate project until 1971, when the former electrical engineering undergraduate students orchestrated its donation to the Smithsonian Institution.