Advent of Computing

LIVE from VCF West 2024, my talk on edge notched cards! Since this is a live recording from an auditorium the audio is a little boomy, so be warned. Actually, I'm pretty sure this is the same space th...

18 Aug 202452min

I've gotten busy preparing for VCF West, so this time you get a short one! In this byte-sized episode we are looking at a short and strange story: that time a plane struck a software company, and the ...

4 Aug 202418min

Have you ever formed a bad first impression? Way back when I formed a hasty impression of this language called TRAC. It's been called a proto-esoteric language, and for good reason. It's outlandish, c...

21 Jul 20241h 14min

In 1984 SCO released PC XENIX, a port of UNIX that ran on an IBM PC. To understand why that's such a technical feat, and how we even got here, we have to go back to the late 1970s. In this episode we ...

7 Jul 20241h 7min

This episode I'm opening up my research vault to present some interesting pre-digital technology. Back before computers us humans used to write everything down on paper. Over time that lead to some or...

23 Jun 20241h 4min

I'm currently out traveling. Due to my poor planning I managed to score back to back trips, for both business and leisure. While I'm not able to get an episode out on time, I do have a replacement! In...

9 Jun 202441min

In 1959 the world bore witness to a new type of computer: the PDP-1. It was the first interactive computer to really make a dent in the market. Some say it was the first minicomputer: a totally new cl...

26 Mai 20241h 15min

I've been feeling like rambling, so it's time for a classic ramble. This time we are looking at the origins of books about computers. More specifically, computer books targeted at a general audience. ...

5 Mai 20241h 3min