Advent of Computing

Have you ever opined for a simpler time? Have you ever wanted a computer that you can understand all the way down to the silicon? Then RCA's COSMAC might be the architecture for you! COSMAC was a simp...

13 Nov 20231h 3min

This episode we are looking at a ghost of bygone days: batch processing! Before fancy terminals peppered computer rooms, before there was a microcomputer on every desk, there was the batch. In this no...

29 Okt 20231h

It's finally Spook Month here on Advent of Computing! To kick things off I'm tackling a bit of a mystery. Between 1972 and 1982 there is only one well documented virus. This period is book ended with ...

15 Okt 20231h 15min

Byte has to be one of the most recognizable parts of the digital lexicon. It's an incantation that can be recognized by even the uninitiated. But where does the byte come from? Has it always existed, ...

24 Sep 20231h 3min

It's finally time! In this episode we are looking at the Monte Carlo method, perhaps the first practical computer program that could outpace human capability. The best part: the method relies on a ran...

10 Sep 20231h 1min

I will admit, the title here is a bit of click bait. In the early 1950s a researcher named Nils Aall Barricelli started in on a bold project. His goal was to simulate evolution on a computer and, in d...

27 Aug 20231h 8min

This episode is simply a reading of the Story of Mel. I opened last episode with an excerpt, but didn't feel right leaving it at that. So, I present, the Story of Mel as written by Ed Nather and prese...

26 Aug 202311min

In 1956 Librascope released the LGP-30, a truly wild machine. It was, for the time, the most simple and cheap machine that could actually be useful. It was the size of a desk when contemporary machine...

15 Aug 20231h 6min