Episode 37 - The Rise of DOS

Who can't resist Librascope hardware? Well, me, for one. And David from Usagi Electric is in the same boat. In this episode we sit down to talk about his LGP-21, how he got it, how he got it working, ...

13 Sep 1h 3min

How did you learn about computers? And how in depth was your education? For some the answer is the Bi-Tran Six: an educational machine released in 1965. This was one of the first computer trainers, an...

1 Sep 52min

Binary is synonymous with digital computing. But is it the only way to crunch numbers? The short answer is no. The long answer, well, that's today's topic. Today we are talking about ternary, aka base...

17 Aug 1h 5min

It's no secret that I've been fascinated by odd UNIX clones for a while. When I got invited back to speak at VCF West this year I decided to share that fascination with a captive audience. In this tal...

3 Aug 48min

In 1950 Northrup unveiled their MAgnetic Drum DIgital Differential Analyser. The machine is a wild piece of technology; a rendering of an analog computer in digital encoding. But how did we get here? ...

19 Jul 1h 7min

EMUL-8 is a fascinating programming language. It's described in just one paper from 1977. It's a mix of features from APL, LISP, ALGOL, and SNOBOL. And, I think, it's a wonderful window into how count...

6 Jul 1h 1min

I mean that both in the specific and the abstract. This episode we are looking at APL, which stands for A Programming Language. APL was developed in the mid 50s, but didn't see a working implementatio...

21 Jun 1h 9min

Dale Biagio(author of Hello, World!) got in touch with me recently. He said he had a book full of short histories of programming languages. Better still, it has sources! How could I resist! In this ep...

14 Jun 31min