J. Halcombe Laning

J. Halcombe "Hal" Laning Jr. (February 14, 1920, in Kansas City, Missouri[1] – May 29, 2012) was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer pioneer who in 1952 invented an algebraic compiler called George (also known as the Laning and Zierler system after the authors of the published paper) that ran on the MIT Whirlwind, the first real-time computer.

[7] Laning features prominently in the third episode of the Science Channel's documentary miniseries titled Moon Machines which aired in June 2008.

He later worked in the MIT Draper Lab, with Richard H. Battin, to develop a scheme for doing onboard navigation on the Apollo program's command/service module guidance system.

The allocation of functions among a sensible number of asynchronous processes, under control of a rate and priority-driven preemptive executive, still represents the state of the art in real-time GN&C computers for spacecraft.

His design saved the Apollo 11 landing mission when the rendezvous radar interface program began using more register core sets and "Vector Accumulator" areas than were physically available in memory, causing the infamous 1201 and 1202 errors.