Jun 28, 2020
Portable computing is now totally ubiquitous. There's a good chance you are listening to this episode on a tiny portable computer right now. But where did it all come from? As it turns out the first portable computer was designed all the way back in 1972. This machine, the DynaBook, only ever existed on paper....
Jun 14, 2020
In this episode we finish up our look at the birth of the transistor. But to do that we have to go back to 1880, the crystal radio detector, and examine the development of semiconductor devices. Once created the transistor would change not just how computers worked, but change how they could be used. That change didn't...
Episode 31 Notes - Project Lightning: NSA's Cryotron Computer
Jun 3, 2020
The development of computer technology, especially early on, is deeply tied to governmental and military research. Early computers like Colossus and the Harvard Mark Iwere a big part of the Allied war effort. The internet itself is an outgrowth of a collection of US government projects. But not all of these undertakings...
