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.
174 episodes transcribedIt's easy to think of Apple and Microsoft as bitter rivals, but that's not always the case. The two companies have a very complicated relationship, an...
The 1980s were a turbulent and fast-moving decade for the video game industry. There were huge success stories, rapid advancements in technology, and...
The widespread use of the internet has shaped our world, it's hard do imagine the modern day without it. One of the biggest featured would have to be...
The floppy disk is one of the most iconic pieces of technology. While not in use in the modern day there was a period of 40 years where the floppy dis...
The floppy disk was a ubiquitous technology for nearly 40 years. From mainframes to home computers, the plastic disk was everywhere. And in the decade...
Our modern world is full of software, it's what makes everything tick. The sheer amount of code that goes into something like keeping the internet run...
Many video games today make use of randomized content, some more than others. It may seem like an obvious feature, but it turns out that procedural ge...
It's time to continue our deep dive into the legacy of Intel's processors. This episode we will be looking at the 8008, the second microprocessor prod...
In this mini episode we will look at the Y2K bug, and some of the recipes it spawned. That's right, we are talking about Y2K cookbooks! You can find a...
In the conclusion to our discussion of PLATO we look at the final incarnation of the system: PLATO IV. How did an educational machine turn into one of...
In the 1960s a small project started at the University of Illinois. This project, called PLATO, would go on to pioneer a truly impressive amount of n...
The computer mouse is a ubiquitous device, it's also one of the least changed devices we use with a computer. The mice we use today have only seen sma...
In this mini-episode we look at a strange event in Microsoft's early history and their first case of piracy. Along the way you will learn about the be...
In 1086 William the Conqueror commissioned a survey of England that would come to be known as the Domesday Book. 900 years later the BBC would create...
Intel is one of the dominant forces in the computer industry today, they may be most well known for their line of microprocessors. These chips have po...
Colossal Cave Adventure is one of the most influential video games of all time. Originally written for the DEC PDP-10 mainframe in 1975 the game has n...
Computer viruses today pose a very real threat. However, it turns out that their origins are actually very non-threatening. Today, we are going to loo...
Today I am joined by Julien Mailland and Kevon Driscoll, co-authors of Minitel: Welcome to the Internet and proprietors of the Minitel Research Lab(mi...
Today we are dipping back into the deep and complex history of the proto-internet. We are going to be looking at Minitel, a France-Wide-Web that was b...
Today we are going to be traveling back to the late 1970s to take a look at the early days of the home computer. And specifically how Microsoft found...
