Advent of Computing

Today we are looking at VisiCalc, the original killer app. Hitting the market in 1979, VisiCalc was the first computer spreadsheet program. Through it's 6 year lifespan it was ported to everything from the Apple II to the IBM PC to the Apple III. It dominated the market and then... it disappeared. Selected Sources: https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/113026 - Oral History with Bricklin and Frankston http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm - Bricklin's personal website https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/MAHC.2007.4338439 - The creation and demise of VisiCalc

The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer was built by the National Bureau of Standards in 1948. It started crunching numbers in 1950 and stayed in constant operation until... 1964! This early machine, festooned with vacuum tubes, lived well past the first transistorized computers. So what exactly is SEAC doing so far into the semiconductor future? Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/circularofbureau551unse/page/n7/mode/2up - Circular 551 https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/85.238389 - EDVAC Draft Report https://sci-hub.se/10.1145/1457720.1457763 - Imaging with SEAC

In this episode I talk with Aaron Reed, author of 50 Years of Text Games. We discuss the history of computer games, interactive fiction, business "gaming", and why we all love Adventure. You can find Aaron's work here: http://aaronareed.net/

Multitasking: we all do it. For a feature of modern computing multitasking has surprisingly old roots. It started out as timesharing on vacuum tube based machines, reached ubiquity on large computers, then hit a wall: the microcomputer. Multitasking didn't smoothly transition over as soon as home computers hit the scene. It took some time, and it took some adaptation. Today we are looking at what made timesharing work, early changes to microprocessors that paved the way for multitasking, and one of the first operating systems to support timesharing in the home. Selected Sources: https://www.roug.org/soren/6809/os9sysprog.html - OS-9 System Programmer's Manual https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-01/page/n15/mode/2up - Article on the development of the 6809 https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/TEC.1962.5219356 - The One-Level Storage System

There's power in music, but not all tones are created equal. During the reign of Bell Telephone there was one tone in particular that opened up a world of possibilities: 2600 Hz. The devotees of this note were called phreakers, and in some cases they knew the telephone system better than Bell employees themselves. This episode were diving in to the early history of phreaking, how a bag of tricks was developed, and why exploring the phone grid was so much fun. Selected sources: http://explodingthephone.com/ - Phil Lapsley's book and website of the same name https://archive.org/details/belltelephonemag09amerrich/page/205/mode/2up - All about the Holmes Burglar Alarm system http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx0947.pdf - FBI's records on Barclay and the Blue Box

When people talk about early computers Babbage's Analytical Engine is bound to come up. Designed back in the 1830's it's definitely older than any other example of the art. But it also has a lot of strikes against it. The machine was purely mechanical. It only really did math. It stored numbers in decimal instead of binary. Worst of all, it only ever existed as designs on paper. So should we call this beast a computer? Or is it something else entirely? Selected Sources: https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html - Sketch of the Analytical Engine, and Lovelace's Notes https://web.archive.org/web/20210226094829/http://athena.union.edu/~hemmendd/Courses/cs80/an-engine.pdf - Bromleys low level description of the engine https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-3-642-61812-3_2 - On the Mathematical Powers of the Calculating Engine, by Charles Babbage https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Oi3IhTZyVCAC/mode/1up - The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, Babbage

We're getting back to my hypertext series with a big of an obscure tale. ZOG is a hypertext system what was first developed in 1972 at Carnegie-Melon University. It then stagnated until the latter half of the 1970s when it was picked back up. By 1983 it was cruising on a US Navy aircraft carrier. ZOG presents a hypertext system with some very modern notions. But here's the part that gets me excited: ZOG was developed after Doug Engelbart's Mother of All Demos. So, in theory, ZOG should take ques from this seminal event. Right? ... right? Selected sources: https://www.campwoodsw.com/mentorwizard/PROMISHistory.pdf - History of PROMIS https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA049512.pdf - 1977 ZOG Report https://apps.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA158084 - 1984 USS Carl Vinson Report

Programming doesn't have to be a very serious discipline. In fact, sometimes it's better if it's a little silly. Today we are talking about INTERCAL, the first esoteric programming language. Is it a joke? Is it a form of hacker folk art? Is it even a good language? To answer those questions we need to asses what makes a programming language "good" in the first place. Program INTERCAL online today! (https://www.tutorialspoint.com/compile_intercal_online.php) Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/intercal-ref/mode/1up?view=theater - 1973 INTERCAL Manual https://esoteric.codes/blog/don-woods - Interview with Don Woods https://sci-hub.se/10.1145/800197.806048 - 1965 TRAC paper

It's no secret, I'm a big fan of memory. Not only is memory crucial for the functioning of a computer, it's also plain weird. This episode we are looking at magnetic core memory; a technology that defined computing for more than two decades. We'll be talking about how it works, the impacts of ferrite, and the surprising controversy surrounding it's creation. Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_datamation_31792007/page/n161/mode/2up - Datamation coverage of the patent disputes http://johngustafson.net/pubs/pub57/ABCPaper.htm - Recreation of ABC https://amhistory.si.edu/archives/AC0196_wang701029.pdf - Wang Oral History http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/core.html - Diagrams and photos of magnetic cores

This episode we blast off at warp speed! We're looking at Star Trek, a game written in BASIC in 1971. Examining this game gives us some insight into the early spread of BASIC. Along the way we will see the issue with paper, why strings matter, and how software was distributed before the Internet. Selected Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20181106092235/https://gamesoffame.wordpress.com/star-trek/ - Games of Fame article with a few interviews https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=275 - Super Star Trek! https://archive.org/details/d64_Star_Trek_1983_Jeff_Lewis - c64 version of Trek, good middle ground between the original and more fully featured versions