ALGOL is one of those topics that's haunted the show for a while. It comes up any time we talk about programming languages, and with good reason. Many of the features and ideas found in modern languages have their roots in ALGOL. Despite that influence, ALGOL itself remains somewhat obscure. It never reached the highs of a C or LISP. In this series we are going to look at ALGOL from 1958 all up to 1968, keeping a careful eye on how the language evolved, how it's problems were addressed, and how ...
Apr 07, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 129
Originally presented at VCF SoCal in February of 2024. The cryotron, a superconductive switch, almost revolutionized computing. It's one of those fascinating near misses. In this episode we are talking about the history of the cryotron, how the NSA and supercomputing factors into the mix, and the current state of research into the topic. Did the NSA actually construct a supercomputer that ran in a vat of liquid helium? The answer is... maybe? Video of this talk: https://youtu.be/FqzSGTZ3TMU...
Mar 24, 2024•42 min•Ep. 128
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 world. It did one thing: play a game called Nim. Over a decade later, in 1951, another Nim machine hit the scene. This computer called Nimrod, was designed to demonstrate how computers worked... by playing a game of Nim. These machines, humble as they may sound, end up deeply complicating the history of computing. Join me as I, once again, muddy th...
Mar 11, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 127
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 could exist, why they existed, and why IBM didn't crush them. We close with a discussion of how these earlier clones impact our understanding of the IBM PC story. The truth is, by 1981 IBM was no stranger to clones. This is the culmination of a wild story, so prepare! Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/iclbusinesstechn0000camp/mode/1up - IC...
Feb 19, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 126
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 1969 IBM already had a history of antitrust litigation. What was IBM doing to upset the Department of Justice, and how does it tie in to the larger story of clone computers? Selected Sources: http://www.cptech.org/at/ibm/ibm1956cd.html - 1956 Consent Decree https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/298/131/ - 1936 Consent Decree https://archive.org...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 125
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, California on Febuary 16th and 17th. VCFs are a wonderful time, and a great opportunity to meet up with other retro enthusiasts. The weekend will be filled with exhibits and speakers, including myself! I will be in attendence, and talking about some super cool technology. Stick around until the end of the interview for the full details. More information ...
Jan 20, 2024•30 min
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 compatible computers. Users could choose a system that was just the right size for their needs, mix and match peripherals, and have no fear of future upgrades. If you started on a low-end 360 you could move up to a top of the line model and keep all your software! Something like this had never been done before. Such a watershed moment resulted in intere...
Jan 15, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 124
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 very much in line with other systems of the era. Where it shines is it's software. In a period when most home computer ran some version of BASIC the Ace was using Forth. On the surface that might sound like a trivial difference, but that one deviation from the norm made all the difference in the world. Selected Sources: https://www.theregister.com/201...
Jan 01, 2024•58 min•Ep. 123
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 those tools, and the most hotly coveted, is the text editor. These programs offer us a window into the digital world. It's no wonder that programmers the world over basically live inside text editors. In this episode will discuss when exactly that digital window was opened. When did text editors first appear? What forms did they take? Selected Source...
Dec 18, 2023•59 min•Ep. 122
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 great resistance to these new languages, but eventually all programmers were won over. Progress was made, despite the forces of counterrevolutionaries. What you won't find in most histories are the actual arguments these counterrevolutionaries made. This episode we are looking at those arguments. I've tracked down a handful of papers that argue again...
Dec 04, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 121
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 might be the architecture for you! COSMAC was a simplified computer architecture designed in the early 70s. It's tiny, cheap, and built to be easy to understand. But is the chip actually useful? Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/manualzilla-id-5721710/page/26/mode/1up?view=theater - All the ELF articles in one place! https://sci-hub.se/10...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 120
This episode we are looking at a ghost of bygone days: batch processing! Before fancy terminals peppered computer rooms, before there was a microcomputer on every desk, there was the batch. In this non-interactive form of computing a user could wait hours, days, or even weeks to get a chance at computer time. Machines were kept well away from programmers, guarded by digital clerics. Why did such an arrangement exist? And did it ultimately help the programmer? Selected Sources: https://multicians...
Oct 29, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 119
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 well documented virus. This period is book ended with plenty of sources and, yes, even viruses. But this decade long span of time has almost nothing! Was this era truly safe from the grips of malicious code? Or is there a secret history lurking just beneath the surface? Selected Sources: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/358453.358455 - Worms at Xerox...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 118
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 where does the byte come from? Has it always existed, or did it more recently come into being? And, more specifically, why is a byte 8 bits? Is it some holdover from long ago, or is there some iron clad rule of 8's? Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1977-02/page/n145/mode/1up?view=theater - Buchholz on the "byte" in BYTE! http...
Sep 24, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 117
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 capability. The best part: the method relies on a random walk to reach a statistically valid answer! Selected Sources: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/10596 - Igniting the Light Elements https://library.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/getfile?00326866.pdf - The Beginning of the Monte Carlo Method, Nick Metropolis...
Sep 10, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 116
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 goal was to simulate evolution on a computer and, in doing so, create a perfect lab to study evolutionary processes. What he found was astonishing. Given a simple rule set these interesting patterns emerged. He called them symbioorganisms. Despite being simple numeric constructs, they exhibited many properties of living things. Did Barricelli create a ...
Aug 27, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 115
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, the Story of Mel as written by Ed Nather and preserved in the Jargon file.
Aug 26, 2023•11 min
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. It was the size of a desk when contemporary machines took up small rooms. It plugged into a normal wall outlet while other machines requires special power feeds. It was, perhaps, the first hint of a personal computer. And at its heart was a magnetic drum that only a true programmer could love. Selected Sources: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-...
Aug 15, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 114
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 language processing lore we covered last time. Along the way we will see how Prolog developed from a set of tools, and how those tools were generalized into a useful language. Selected Sources: http://alain.colmerauer.free.fr/alcol/ArchivesPublications/PrologHistory/19november92.pdf - The Birth of Prolog https://archive.org/details/introductiontoma0000hut...
Jul 30, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 113
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 natural language processing, it's tools, and it's languages. This episode we are doing just that, going from ELIZA to Planner ro SHRDLU in an attempt to figure out how AI was first taught human tongues, where smoke and mirrors end, and where facinting programming begins. Selected Sources: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/365153.365168 - ELIZA htt...
Jul 16, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 112
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 place to put things. This episode we are looking at the first practical use of space: communication satellites. Selected Source: https://archive.org/details/BigBounc1960 - The Big Bounce https://archive.org/details/dtic-ada-141865-ieee-centenial-journal-1984-ocr/page/n67/mode/2up - A Signal Corp Space Opera https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4308/ch6.htm - The...
Jul 02, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 111
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 hardware, and how it fits into the larger story of the rise of microprocessors. These new tiny chips were already changing the world, but they brought along their own problems. Selected source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/atari-2600 - Inventing the Atari 2600 https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2012/09/102658257-05-01-acc.pdf - Al Alc...
Jun 18, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 110
What really is the deal with microcontrollers? Are they just little computers... or are they something totally different? This episode we are looking at the development of the microcontroller through the history of the TMS1000....
Jun 04, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 109
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 it call connects to hypertext. Selected Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20051227184732/http://people.lis.uiuc.edu/~wrayward/otlet/xanadu.htm - Visions of Xanadu https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/4184 -- Selected Essays of Paul Otlet...
May 21, 2023•56 min•Ep. 108
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 episode(and the next) we are looking at the Mundaneum, a project started in the 1890s to address the information problem. How is it connected to the larger story of hypertext? And how can this older project inform our views on the information problem? Selected sources: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/4184 -- Selected Essays of Paul Otlet...
May 07, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 107
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 chip as a makeshift image sensor. In this episode I'm coming back around to the Cyclops and taking a look at the origins of digital imaging in general. Selected Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gmSeVfmZHw - Terry Walker CHM lecture https://sci-hub.ru/10.1109/6.591664 - The origins of the PN junction https://sci-hub.ru/10.1364/AO.11.000522 - T...
Apr 16, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 106
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 really win in the market place. Why was that? Was the machine setup for failure from the start? Was it's case really designed before it's motherboard? When it comes to the III there's a surprising amount of folklore to untangle. Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/sim_byte_1985-01_10_1/page/166/mode/1up?view=theater - Interview with Wozniak ...
Apr 02, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 105
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 fancy drawing program. Under the hood it's hiding some impressive new programming techniques. Selected Sources: http://worrydream.com/refs/Sutherland-Sketchpad.pdf - Sutherland's Sketchpad thesis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI - Sketchpad in action https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102738195 - Oral History transcripts...
Mar 19, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 104
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://sci-hub.se/10.2307/3917015 - Early article on Stibitz's CNC Model I https://archive.org/details/fortranprimer0000orga/page/103/mode/1up?view=theater - Primer on the FORTRAN Monitor System https://kyber.io/rawvids/LISP_I_Programmers_Manual_LISP_I_Programmers_Manual.pdf - LISP I manual...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 103
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 objects? And, most importantly, what are some neat uses of the language? Selected Sources: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/956653.956654 - Rationale for the Design of Ada https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/45345/08-2590_A1b.pdf - Cassini's AACS computer and software http://www.bitsavers.org/components/intel/iAPX_432/171821-001_Introductio...
Feb 20, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 102
