Each trail starts somewhere ordinary and ends somewhere you would not expect. Every step says why one article leads to the next.
Apollo 11 to Microwave oven
5 articles · 4 connections
Start
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was steered by the Apollo Guidance Computer.
Each Moon flight carried two Apollo Guidance Computers, one in the command module and one in the lunar module, at the centre of guidance, navigation and control.
Source: Apollo 11 links to Apollo Guidance Computer on Wikipedia.
Its software was stored in core rope memory.
Most of the computer's software lived in core rope memory, read-only memory made by weaving wires through and around tiny magnetic cores.
Source: Apollo Guidance Computer links to Core rope memory on Wikipedia.
The memory was woven by hand at Raytheon, which built the computer.
Raytheon manufactured the flight hardware, and the programs written at MIT were woven into rope memory by women working in its factories.
Source: Core rope memory links to Raytheon on Wikipedia.
Raytheon also invented the microwave oven.
In 1945 Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer found that the magnetrons the company made for radar could heat food quickly; Raytheon sold the first commercial microwave oven in 1947.
Source: Raytheon links to Microwave oven on Wikipedia.
Destination
Microwave oven
Why it’s unexpected: The company that wove Apollo's software into memory by hand also sold the world's first microwave oven, two decades earlier.
All trails
- Apollo 11 → ARPANET (5 articles)
- Apollo 11 → V-2 rocket (4 articles)
- Apollo 11 → Microwave oven (5 articles)
- Microwave oven → Tizard Mission (4 articles)
- Loom → Lord Byron (5 articles)
- Pencil → Ig Nobel Prize (5 articles)
- Coffee → Lloyd's of London (4 articles)
- Banana → The Crystal Palace (4 articles)
- Purple → Gin and tonic (5 articles)
How trails are made
Every step follows a link that exists in the earlier article on Wikipedia, and every explanation restates what the articles themselves say: no step is a guess. Trails are written by hand and checked against Wikipedia automatically.