May 29, 2022
The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer was built by the National Bureau of Standards in 1948. It started crunching numbers in 1950 and stayed in constant operation until... 1964! This early machine, festooned with vacuum tubes, lived well past the first transistorized computers. So what exactly is SEAC doing so far...
May 22, 2022
In this episode I talk with Aaron Reed, author of 50 Years of Text Games. We discuss the history of computer games, interactive fiction, business "gaming", and why we all love Adventure.
You can find Aaron's work here:
http://aaronareed.net/
May 15, 2022
Multitasking: we all do it. For a feature of modern
computing multitasking has surprisingly old roots. It started out
as timesharing on vacuum tube based machines, reached ubiquity on
large computers, then hit a wall: the microcomputer. Multitasking
didn't smoothly transition over as soon as home computers
hit...
May 1, 2022
There's power in music, but not all tones are created
equal. During the reign of Bell Telephone there was one tone in
particular that opened up a world of possibilities: 2600 Hz. The
devotees of this note were called phreakers, and in some cases they
knew the telephone system better than Bell employees themselves.
This...
