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 rich stories behind their creation, in each episode we will learn how older tech has lead to our modern world.
161 episodes transcribedOriginally presented at VCF SoCal in February of 2024. The cryotron, a superconductive switch, almost revolutionized computing. It's one of those fasc...
This is going to be a wild rambling ride. In 1939 a computer called Nimatron was made. It was one of the earliest digital electronic computers in the...
This episode wraps up the System/360 trilogy by taking things back to where they started for me. We will be looking at System/360 clones, how they co...
My coverage of the IBM System/360 continues! In this episode we look at US v IBM, and the fallout that surrounded the release of the System/360. By 1...
In this episode I sit down and talk with Micki and Steve about VCF SoCal, a new Vintage Computer Festival! The event is taking place in Orange, Califo...
The release of the IBM System/360 represents a major milestone in the history of computing. In 1964 IBM announced the 360 as the first family of comp...
Released in 1982, the Jupiter Ace is a fascinating little computer. It's hardware isn't much to write home about. It's just an 8-bit microcomputer ve...
Tools are the most important programs in the world. Without quality tools it's impossible to write quality software. One of those most important of t...
Most accounts of the early history of programming languages all share something in common. They all have a sentence or two explaining how there was g...
Have you ever opined for a simpler time? Have you ever wanted a computer that you can understand all the way down to the silicon? Then RCA's COSMAC m...
This episode we are looking at a ghost of bygone days: batch processing! Before fancy terminals peppered computer rooms, before there was a microcomp...
It's finally Spook Month here on Advent of Computing! To kick things off I'm tackling a bit of a mystery. Between 1972 and 1982 there is only one wel...
Byte has to be one of the most recognizable parts of the digital lexicon. It's an incantation that can be recognized by even the uninitiated. But whe...
It's finally time! In this episode we are looking at the Monte Carlo method, perhaps the first practical computer program that could outpace human ca...
I will admit, the title here is a bit of click bait. In the early 1950s a researcher named Nils Aall Barricelli started in on a bold project. His go...
This episode is simply a reading of the Story of Mel. I opened last episode with an excerpt, but didn't feel right leaving it at that. So, I present,...
In 1956 Librascope released the LGP-30, a truly wild machine. It was, for the time, the most simple and cheap machine that could actually be useful....
I'm wrapping up my dive into Prolog with... Prolog itself! This episode I'm actually covering the development of Prolog, using all the natural languag...
I've been told I need to do an episode about Prolog. Well, here's the start of that process. To talk about Prolog we first need to come to grips with...
Space is cool, in all meanings of the word. Not only is it wondrous, vast, and fascinating, it can also be a cold place. It's also a very useful plac...
