Perceptual Monitoring System
The G-S 6000 Perceptual Monitoring System sent to Holloman AFB. Trained Ham and Able chimps for Project Mercury. Holloman Air Force Base New Mexico, 6000 Perceptual Monitoring System. The name HAM was an acronym for Holloman Aeronautical Medical.
Project Mercury [1] was the first human spaceflight program of the United States running from 1959 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a human into Earth orbit and return the person safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the U.S. Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it spanned twenty unmanned developmental missions involving test animals, and successful missions completed by six of the seven Mercury astronauts.
Beginning in July 1959, the three-year-old chimpanzee [2] was trained under the direction of neuroscientist Joseph V. Brady at Holloman Air Force Base Aero Medical Field Laboratory to do simple, timed tasks in response to electric lights and sounds. In his pre-flight training, Ham was taught to push a lever within five seconds of seeing a flashing blue light; failure to do so resulted in an application of positive punishment, while a correct response earned him a banana pellet.
[1] Project Mercury: Wikipedia.org
[2] Project Mercury Chimps: Wikipedia.org
