Advent of Computing

In 1973 the world caught it's first glimpse of INTERCAL. It's a wild and wacky language, somewhere between comedy and cutting satire. But the compiler was never circulated. There would be later implem...

1 Jun 20251h 8min

The S1 operating system can do it all! It can run on any computer, read any disk, and execute any software. It can be UNIX compatible, DOS compatible, and so, so much more! But... can S1 ship? Today w...

11 Mai 20251h 4min

How do you make a computer act less like a computer? It sounds like some kind of riddle, but in the early 1960s it was an actual problem. As IBM customers transitioned from tabulators to computers the...

27 Apr 20251h 4min

In the early 1960s a neat little machine came out of MIT. Well, kind of MIT. The machine was called LINC. It was small, flexible, and designed to live in laboratories. Some have called it the first pe...

13 Apr 202558min

The LGP-30 is one of my favorite computers. It's small, scrappy, strange, and wonderous. Among its many wonders are two obscure languages: ACT-I and ACT-III. In this episode we are exploring the ACTS,...

30 Mar 20251h 20min

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