When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration came into existence in 1958, the stereotypical computer was the "UNIVAC," a collection of spinning tape drives, noisy printers, and featureless boxes, filling a house-sized room. Expensive to purchase and operate, the giant computer needed a small army of technicians in constant attendance to keep it running. Within a decade and a half, NASA had one of the world's largest collections of such monster computers, scattered in each of its centers. Moreover, to the amazement of anyone who knew the computer field in 1958, NASA also flew computers in orbit, to the moon, and to Mars, the latter machines running unattended for months on end.