Advent of Computing

Often times people assume the US is the homeland of the internet. Funded by the US Department of Defence, the first attempts at a large-scale network were started during the height of the Cold War, and a large part of it's design was redundancy and robust-ness. Some of the researchers were quite frank about it's purpose: to create a network that could survive an upcoming nuclear war. This military-hardened infrastructure was known as ARPANET. But that's only part of the story, and the US wasn't the first to the party. The fact is, the internet was born during the Cold War. This was an era that saw huge advancements in science, both for better and for worse. The space race put humans on the moon, and the nuclear arms race put humans dangerously close to annihilation. So it should be no surprise that America's counterpart in this age, the Soviet Union, was working towards their own proto-internet.

The Raspberry Pi had been a huge success at its stated goals, and continues to be. But, this isn't the first time a British company would design and develop a computer as an accessible platform for learning programming. In fact, if you've read much about the Pi then you've probably seen people calling it a "BBC Micro 2". So what was the BBC Micro? What did the BBC have to do with creating a new computer? And how is any of this connected to the 21st century version? Today I want to share the story from a slice of a somewhat forgotten age: BBC's involvement with Acorn Computers and how they worked together to educate a generation of programmers. Along the way we will see how a small UK company created an impressive series of computers who's legacy may not be known in the States, but has had a surprising impact on the world. Special thanks to Neil from Retro Man Cave for sharing his memories of the BBC Micro. You can find him on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLEoyoOKZK0idGqSc6Pi23w

Today, I want to share with you the story of the first PC clones and how they cemented the rise of the x86 chipset. Most of this story takes place between 1981 and 1984, but I think it's fair to say that these 3 years are some of the most influential for the PC's rise to domination. So lets start the story with a discussion of the IBM PC, how it was special, and then examine how reverse engineering it lead to the current x86 monoculture we see today.

In this byte-sized episode we look at edge-notched cards. A punch card adjacent technology with a strange connection to the early internet.

What are the origins of our modern day text-to-speech systems? In this episode we will dive into the rich history of electronic talking machines. Along the way I will tell you the story of the vocoder, the first singing computer, and a little about the father of modern synthesized speech.

Now, as the name suggests this is the second part of a series on the history of UNIX. Part 1 mainly covers the background leading up to UNIX. If you haven't listened to it yet, I strongly suggest you go do that now. A lot of what was covered in part 1 provides needed context for our discussion today. Just as a quick recap, last time I told you about CTSS and Multics, two of the earliest time-sharing operating systems. Today, we are going to be picking up where we left off: Bell Labs just left Project MAC and decided to start their own time-sharing project. What they didn't realize was that this new project, called UNIX, would soon outshine all of its predecessors. But when this all started, in 1969 on a spare mainframe at Bell Labs, there was no hint at it's amazing future.

In this mini-episode we talk about Space Travel, an obscure video game from 1969.

Many people have never even heard of Unix, an operating system first released in the early 1970s. But that doesn't change the fact that all of the internet, and nearly every computer or smart device you interact with is based on some variant of Unix. So, how was such an important project created, and how did it revolutionize computing? Today we will dive into the story leading up to Unix: time-sharing computers in the 1960s. This is really just the background for part 2 where we will discuss the creation and rise of Unix itself. However, the history of early multi-user computers is itself deeply interesting and impactful on the evolution of computing.

The original Apple Macintosh, later rebranded the Macintosh 128k, is inarguably one of the most recognizable vintage computers. Even it's design has become iconic: a single 3 ½ inch floppy drive and 9 inch black-and-white CRT built into one small rounded beige box. Even on its release in 1984 it was heralded as a visionary and groundbreaking machine that could even rival the success of the IBM PC. Today, we are going to look at the enduring legacy of the Macintosh and answer the questions: what did Apple invent and what did they borrow, and are all interfaces that follow clones of the Macintosh.

A lot of newer technology doesn't expressly say it's going to "revolutionize the human experience", but sometimes, that line may actually be closer to the truth than you would expect. Today, I am going to tell you about a time when that was very much the case. Today we go back to 1968 to look at Doug Engelbart's "The Mother of all Demos" You can watch the entite archve of the demo here: http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/448/

Today, I want to share with you a technology that shambles among us as a corpse that refuses to die. That is, of course, the punch card. In this episode, we will be talking about the storied history and influence from beyond the grave of the punch card.