You can now wear an Apollo Guidance Computer keypad as a wristwatch

A wristwatch shaped as a replica of the display and keypad (DSKY) used with the Apollo Guidance Computer on NASA's historic missions to the moon.

Apollo Instruments has shrunk the display and keyboard (DSKY) for the historic Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) to work as a wristwatch. (Image credit: Apollo Instruments)

The following article was written by Tom Robinson, collectSPACE.com contributor.

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A pair of hands are shown working on a laptop computer. On the wrist of the left hand is a watch in the shape of the display and keypad (DSKY) for the Apollo Guidance Computer. — Billed as the "first true moonwatch," Apollo Instruments' replica DSKY lets you wear history on your wrist. (Image credit: Apollo Instruments)

"I started thinking, could you recreate the DSKY at the scale of an Apple Watch?" said Mark Clayton, Apollo Instruments' CEO. An engineer with a lifelong passion for aviation and space, Clayton was working on miniaturized digital displays when he noticed that the vibrant green glow they emitted bore a striking resemblance to the iconic DSKY display.

Using original drawings from MIT, Clayton and his team, which includes two former Formula 1 engineers, set about scaling down the DSKY.

"We were pushing our manufacturing equipment to its limits, producing something so intricate and small," he said.

Nouns and verbs

Equally revolutionary as the AGC's small size was the way the Apollo astronauts interacted with it. Rather than carrying thousands of punch cards into space or relying on a sprawling bank of switches and lights, as was typical for computers of the time, MIT designed one of the first display and keyboard systems, which was then used to enter numbers representing verb and noun codes.

To those accustomed to modern point-and-click setups, the AGC's approach can appear challenging to grasp. In essence, verbs represented actions the computer could perform, while nouns were specific data inputs.

For example, pressing "verb" followed by "35" triggered a test of the indicator lights and display. Verb and noun commands also instructed the Apollo lunar module's computer to begin the landing routine. Both of these actions can be replicated on the DSKY Moonwatch.

A graphic showing Apollo Instruments' DSKY Moonwatch with its features labeled. — In addition to running the original guidance computer software, Apollo Instruments' DSKY Moonwatch is equipped with GPS, alarms and accurate timekeeping features. (Image credit: Apollo Instruments)

Verb and noun codes also allow users to adjust the watch's time, alarm, stopwatch and GPS navigation functionalities. On the Apollo missions, astronauts used a "cheat sheet" to keep track of nearly 200 verbs and nouns. Wearers have a similar guide, so there is no long list of codes to memorize.

"We felt a profound responsibility to get this right," said Clayton. "We wanted to create something that the community is going to be accepting of, where they say, 'This is exactly how we would have designed it ourselves.'"

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Half a decade in the making, Apollo Instruments' DSKY Moonwatch is designed to Buzz Aldrin.