Just found out the first CAD software was made in the 60s for the Apollo program

I was reading an old engineering blog last night and came across this wild fact. The first real CAD system, called Sketchpad, was created at MIT in 1963. It was literally made to help design parts for the Apollo moon missions. The thing that blew my mind was that it used a light pen on a screen, which was insane tech for back then. I always figured CAD was a 90s thing with Windows. It makes you realize how much of our drafting tools came from space race money and problems. Kinda puts my daily struggle with layer management into perspective, haha. Has anyone else stumbled on other old-school drafting history that's actually cool?

3 comments

3 Comments

jasonp303mo ago

Honestly seems like people make too big a deal about this stuff... it was just a tool they needed at the time. Sure, it's neat, but calling it "wild" is a stretch. They had a problem and threw money at it, that's all. My grandpa drafted whole engines on a board with a pencil, and that worked fine too.

wood.john3mo ago

Your grandpa's pencil work was amazing, but @jasonp30, the real wild part is they built a physical machine just to do one math problem.

hannah_williams1mo ago

Got a buddy who helped build a test setup for a new type of engine he was working on. It took six months of welding and wiring just to run one test that lasted 90 seconds. When I ribbed him about it, he just shrugged and said sometimes you gotta build the whole kitchen just to bake one pie.