Advent of Computing

When I was down at VCF SoCal I ran into a strange machine: the Keypact Micro-VIP. It's a terminal without a keyboard, covered in dials, with a speaker and a switch labeled "voice". This chance encount...

17 Mar 202555min

A special treat from VCF SoCal. While visiting I had the chance to host a panel on restoration and preservation. I was joined by: David from Usagi Electric (https://www.youtube.com/@UsagiElectric) Rob...

2 Mar 20251h

Have you ever looked at an old computer and seen a weird typewriter thing tacked on? In most cases that's a device called a Flexowriter. It's half electric typewriter, half teleprinter, half tape read...

3 Feb 20251h

In the modern day Windows is a power house, but that wasn't always the case. In this episode we are looking at the fraught development of Windows 1.0. During development it was called vaporware, it wa...

20 Jan 20251h 5min

This episode we are taking a trip back to UNIX world. We're looking at IDRIS, the first clone of UNIX. It was supposed to be highly compatible, but use no code from Bell Labs. IDRIS ran on everything ...

5 Jan 202558min

In 1970 a little language called BLISS emerged from Carnegie Mellon University. It was a systems language, meant for operating systems and compilers. It was designed, in part, as a response to Dijkstr...

22 Des 20241h 3min

In 1961 Texas Instruments unveiled the Molecular Electronic Computer, aka: Mol-E-Com. It was a machine that fit in the palm of your hand, but had all the power of a much larger computer. This was in a...

9 Des 202454min

The Z4, completed by Konrad Zuse in 1945, is a computer with a wild story. It was made from scrounged parts, survived years of bombing raids, moved all around Berlin, and eventually took refuge in bas...

25 Nov 202458min