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The question is mostly about the fonts used in those screens. AFAIK, the images were slides superimposed with data generated by computers that was captured from CRTs by cameras and piped into the MOCR as analog video to be displayed in the slow-scan screens. Terminals such as the IBM 2250 and 2260 were used in the mid-to-late 60's, with vector and raster displays respectively, but I couldn't find information on them being used at NASA's mission control, even though there were multiple IBM 360's in operation there.

MOCR 2 during the Apollo 13 crisis

The image above show what seems like 24 lines of text, which would be expected from the early CRT terminals of the time.

Other images (below) however, show what appears to be a much higher text density:

Photo 2

Flight Director Console

None of these images show the characters with enough resolution to distinguish any typographic features, nor they show the text overlays used for labels. Having such close-ups or documentation would be extremely valuable from a historic point-of-view.

A different one, from another source (MIT Science Reporter — "Landing on the Moon" (1966), 26m06s into the film), shows clearly the artifacts of a high-refresh vector display (brighter points where the beam slows down, some irregularity due to analog response of beam deflection), but it's from earlier stages of the Apollo program and not from the MOCR:

Earlier Apollo close-up

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    $\begingroup$ this asks about bitmapped fonts but this question applies to even earlier technology, how cool! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Jan 24, 2020 at 22:13
  • $\begingroup$ Indeed. Some close-up shots of Space Shuttle displays show what looks like vector graphics. It'd make some sense to draw those in long-persistence phosphor screens to be captured by cameras and piped to the slow-scan screens at the consoles. OTOH, vector displays offer freedom to position elements outside grids and I see a lot of character grids that only make sense on raster character displays. $\endgroup$
    – rbanffy
    Jan 27, 2020 at 18:53
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    $\begingroup$ There are tons of bitmaps in MAME ROMs (I've been digging through them for a Unicode extension proposal) but very few things go that far back in time. In those days, CRT terminals were the kind of thing one would expect to find only at NASA - most others had to make it work with teletypes. I started my own github.com/rbanffy/3270font from the x3270 bitmapped fonts. $\endgroup$
    – rbanffy
    Jan 27, 2020 at 19:06
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    $\begingroup$ @rbanffy in the early days the shuttle simulator instructor station used three physically different types of CRT displays - vector, raster, and onboard display repeaters. By the time I started working in the MCC it was all raster there (x windows). The simulator in later days was all raster too. $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Jan 28, 2020 at 13:09
  • $\begingroup$ @OrganicMarble looking at the available footage of the Apollo/early Shuttle era MOCR, I see some clues that indicate a mix of raster/character displays (the "TV guide", some text-only displays where borders line up with character cell limits) and vector (where text isn't aligned to character cells or where there are multiple character sizes on screen). BTW, working in the MCC is a killer line on any CV :;) $\endgroup$
    – rbanffy
    Jan 28, 2020 at 21:55

2 Answers 2

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The National Archives website has the stock footage for the NASA documentary "This is Mission Control". In the footage they show closeup shots of several screen in the MOCR and the staff support rooms. The footage is from October 1970, so it's probably safe to assume the screens show data for an Apollo 14 simulation run. Here are two examples from it.

Lunar Orbit Insertion Planning: https://i.imgur.com/THJBg90.png

CMC DSKY And State Buffer Monitor: enter image description here

Often they would just pan the camera along the rows of screens in the MOCR, so you can't decipher everything on the screens which is a bit unfortunate. But you can find more by looking through the footage on the NARA catalog website: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=this%20is%20mission%20control&f.fileFormat=video%2Fmp4

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    $\begingroup$ Great find and examples! $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Jan 26, 2020 at 14:38
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These are the best I've seen. They are from the recent restoration of the Apollo MOCR but are accurate AFAIK.

enter image description here

enter image description here

Source: https://wordpress.accuweather.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/mission-control-7.jpg

I ran across a document that might be of use. It's basically the handbook for creating MCC displays of that era. It contains a great deal of in-depth info and some sample displays.

enter image description here

enter image description here

The document is the Philco-Ford Display Formats Manual.

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    $\begingroup$ I couldn't get information on the original sources for these slides from the company that made the restoration. There is an excellent photo gallery at the Are Technica website. $\endgroup$
    – rbanffy
    Jan 24, 2020 at 21:45
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    $\begingroup$ Nice addition. I could count 34 lines, but never would be able to figure out the 50 column width from the original images alone. $\endgroup$
    – rbanffy
    Jul 11, 2021 at 20:25
  • $\begingroup$ Also, I wonder if the row counts influenced later platforms: the "2, 3, 4, or 5 percent of display height" gives us 50, 33+, 25 and 20 lines, the first 3 went on to be quite popular in later computers and terminals. $\endgroup$
    – rbanffy
    Jul 11, 2021 at 20:30

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