6908 Assembly Language Programming:
At the end of my first summer, they learned that I could write software, so I learned 6809 Assembly Language and did the programming for a custom air-shock cannon project.
When devices are made for the military, they need to be tested in extreme environments, including 'shock' where a large mass is slammed into the device-under-test to see if it survives. For large shock testing, Motorola had an air cannon system (it was actually located under the employee parking lot) and the device-under-test was bolted to a beam at one end of a long cannon and air was used to propel a projectile down the barrel, slamming into the test beam imparting a shock.
Our job was to make an instrument to measure the exact speed of the projectile which we did by installing two laser beams in the barrel - the projectile would break these beams starting and stopping a timer, and the software I wrote calculated the projectile's speed for display which was used to determine the amount of shock the test provided.