Episode 189 - The IBM 701
At the end of the 1940s IBM stood at a crossroads. The punch card company had yet to enter the electronic computer market. Forces within and...
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Advent of Computing
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...
Episodes
20 of 208 episodesUsagi Electric and the LGP-21 Restoration
Who can't resist Librascope hardware? Well, me, for one. And David from Usagi Electric is in the same boat. In this episode we sit down to t...
Episode 188 - Training and Teaching with the Bi-Tran Six
How did you learn about computers? And how in depth was your education? For some the answer is the Bi-Tran Six: an educational machine relea...
Episode 187 - What's Better Than Binary?
Binary is synonymous with digital computing. But is it the only way to crunch numbers? The short answer is no. The long answer, well, that's...
LIVE from VCF West - Wait, Is That Really UNIX?
It's no secret that I've been fascinated by odd UNIX clones for a while. When I got invited back to speak at VCF West this year I decided to...
Episode 186 - MADDIDA
In 1950 Northrup unveiled their MAgnetic Drum DIgital Differential Analyser. The machine is a wild piece of technology; a rendering of an an...
Episode 185 - Is EMUL-8ion a Form of Flattery?
EMUL-8 is a fascinating programming language. It's described in just one paper from 1977. It's a mix of features from APL, LISP, ALGOL, and...
Episode 184 - What Is A Programming Language?
I mean that both in the specific and the abstract. This episode we are looking at APL, which stands for A Programming Language. APL was deve...
Dale Biagio - Hello, World!
Dale Biagio(author of Hello, World!) got in touch with me recently. He said he had a book full of short histories of programming languages....
Episode 183 - A Digital Gap?
I've been browsing old compur surveys and trying to build up a comprehensive data set. What I've found is a little surprising: between late...
Episode 182 - Spinning Memories
What connects IBM, the NSA, the Third Reich, and high fidelity recordings of symphonies? The answer is: magnetic drum memory. Join me as I l...
Episode 181 - RAYDAC
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...
Episode 180 - You Wouldn't Magnetize a Tape!
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...
Episode 179 - Programming Block by Block
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...
Episode 178 - The Programma 101
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 - Forty-Four Esolangs
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....
Episode 177 - Getting Real with RSX
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...
Episode 176 - Is That Even UNIX?
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...
Episode 175 - SNOBOL? That's Disgusting!
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...
Episode 174 - The Bell Model I
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...