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.
171 episodes transcribedThis 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...
I don't usually cover video games. When I do, you know it's for a weird reason. This episode we are looking at the Atari VCS 2600, it's strange hardwa...
What really is the deal with microcontrollers? Are they just little computers... or are they something totally different? This episode we are looking...
This episode we pick back up where we left off. We are looking at the roots of the Mundaneum, the applications of the Universal Decimal Code, and how...
The Internet is the closest we've come to a universal store of all human knowledge. However, it's not the first pass at this lofty goal. In this epis...
Back in episode 90 I made a passing reference to the Cyclops, the first consumer digital camera. It's this masterstroke of hackery that uses a RAM ch...
The Apple III was a pretty slick machine... in theory. From a lack of launch software, to strait up hardware failures, Apple's 3rd computer didn't re...
We're finally taking a look at Sketchpad. This program was completed in 1963 as Ivan Sutherland's Ph.D. research. On the surface it looks like a very...
This episode I attempt to find the first interactive computer text interface. All I can say is, well, it's a journey. Selected Sources: https...
This episode picks up where we left off last time. We are looking at Ada and its applications. How does Ada handle tasking? What's the deal with obje...
Ada is a fascinating language with a fascinating history. It was initially developed as part of a Department of Defence project. The plan was to crea...
