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Welcome to Advent of Computing, the show that talks about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have ric...
In 1947 Raytheon signed a contract to make their first computer. It would be their last... at least for many many years. The fruits of this...
The image of a mainframe is almost always accompanied by it's companion: the magnetic tape drive. For decades magnetic tape served as the me...
In which we discuss GPSS: the General Purpose Simulation Language. As for as languages go, this is a unique one. It's designed for certain t...
The Olivetti Programma 101 isn't quite like any other machine. On first glance it looks like a big desktop calculator. Inside, it's a purebr...
Dan Temkin has been a long time friend of the show. I finally got the chance to sit down and talk with him about one of his latest projects....
Who wants to hear me make incorrect assumptions about old software? RSX is a system that, from the outside, can sound like it has a similar...
UNIX is beloved by many. It's the classic minicomputer operating system. It's big, it's powerful, it's multitasking, and it has some very sp...
Today we are talking about one of the most unique languages I've ever come across. SNOBOL emerges from the early days of programming. It's f...
We are getting back to the actual digital family tree. In 1937 George Stibitz built a tiny binary adding circuit on his kitchen table using...
Hybrid computers are composed of a digital computer linked to an analog computer. That leads to an interesting challenge: how do you write s...
In 1945 the first electronic digital computers sparked to life. Number crunching was instantly changed forever! The perfect technology had a...
Last episode I said that Fourth Generation Languages were a topic for another time. Well... this counts as another time. Today we are trying...
I'm back to normal episodes, and I'm running out the gate with a weird one. Thoroughbred/OS was a multi-user and multi-tasking operating sys...
I recently had the chance to talk to Ben Zotto about his upcoming book: Go Computer Now! - The Story of Sphere Computers. It's all about an...
In 1981 Joe Dellinger attempted to create the perfect computer program: a virus that spread silently. In 1982 a revision of that virus broke...
Imagine a secret number that could be used to bring your computer to a screeching halt. In 1977 Gerry Wheeler discovered an interesting feat...
Have you ever had a computer do something you can't explain? Have you ever thought a machine had a mind of its own? In 1971 Met Life was fac...
My trilogy on the PDP-11 concludes with a look at the far flung places this computer can take us. In this episode we look at some issues wit...
This episode we continue my series on the PDP-11 by examining how DEC adapted to the advent of the microprocessor. Along the way we will see...
Last weekend I had the chance to talk about the LGP-30 and my emulation project at VCF West in Mountain View, CA. The showrunners will be po...
The DEC PDP-11 is one of the most influential minicomputers of all time. Some would even call it the most influential computer of all time....
In 1949 CSIRAC sprung to life in a lab in Sydney, Australia. It was a very early stored program computer. All machines of the era were uniqu...
The first batch of digital computers emerge directly following WWII. The hallmark of this generation is uniqueness: no two computers are the...
Lunar Lander is one of the best loves video games of all time. The game was created in 1969 as an homage to the recent Apollo 11. From there...
In 1982 Intel released the iAPX 286. It's was the first heir to the smash-hit 8086. But the 286 was developed before the IBM PC put an Intel...
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 th...
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 c...
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...
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 design...
The LGP-30 is one of my favorite computers. It's small, scrappy, strange, and wonderous. Among its many wonders are two obscure languages: A...
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 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...
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'...
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 Wi...
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 compatib...
In 1970 a little language called BLISS emerged from Carnegie Mellon University. It was a systems language, meant for operating systems and c...
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, bu...
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...
In 1933 Konrad Zuse, a German civil engineer, caught the computing bug. It would consume the rest of his life. According Zuse he invented th...
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Have you ever felt like a computer just refuses to work? Like a machine has a mind of it's own? In 1970 a hard drive at the National Farmers...
This time we are diving back into the Jargon File to take a look at some hacker folklore. Back in the day hackers at MIT spent their time sp...
In 1962 Food Center Wholesale Grocers Inc installed a new IBM 305 RAMAC. That's when things started to go wrong. The faulty machine seemed t...
Programming, as a practice and study, has been steadily evolving for the past 70 or so years. Over the languages have become more sophistica...
The early history of computer games is messy, weird, and surprising. This episode we are looking at HUTSPIEL, perhaps one of the oldest game...
I'm finally back to my usual programming! This time we are taking one of my patent pending rambles through a topics. Today's victim: the hum...
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...
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...
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 prot...
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 her...