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When transit passes were designed by hand (2022)
In the 1930s–60s, Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company offered trolley and bus riders a weekly burst of color and hand lettering. About 300 of these tickets are now in our collection.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
History & Retro Computing
Any year
122
Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way
This isn't quite right , but it's the type of wrong that cites its sources and hides in the part you'd never think to fact check:
123
The tiny holdout building in the middle of Macy’s is back in view
The enormous faux shopping bag that served as an advertisement for Macy’s is mostly gone, save for a patch of red facing Sixth Avenue. Scaffolding covers the ground floor retail space, and da…
124
The case for MUDs in modern times (2018)
In the age of smart devices and instant entertainment, can a medium as old as MUDs survive? Driven entirely by text, these Multi-User Dimensions ― or Dungeons,
125
Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models
Explained by a former Sony engineer
126
Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time
This computer was so good and so far out there, we didn't know what we had.
127
The Beam Engine
See how a beam engine works through interactive 3D figures exploring steam, pressure, Watt's condenser, valves, linkages, and the governor.
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It's a shame what's happened to radio
Why I wouldn't enjoy returning to radio as a disk jockey.
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Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? (2019)
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2026125 points118 commentsHistory & Retro Computing details
At long last, Relic Entertainment has announced that Age of Empires 4 is coming. Strategy gamers rejoice! I am excited – I played the first one back in ’98 (I may be dating myself here)…
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The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal
Somewhere at the bottom of the Forth and Clyde Canal, buried in the silt, there is a box of custom silicon that was right about almost everything. Back in 1988 a Scottish hi-fi company shipped a processor that checked the type and bounds of every memory access in hardware, garbage-collected its own heap in silicon, […]
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The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
As of writing, the Zilog Z80 processor was officially launched 50 years ago, in July of 1976, less than 4 years after the last human had walked on the moon, decades closer to WWII than to the present day, roughly at a half way point between the Kennedy assassination and the fall of the Berlin wall, closer to the…
132
Lego building instructions through time
Building instructions. The silent helper that without a single word guides you, step by step, to transform your pile of bricks to fantastic creations. The tool that shows you building techniques and gives you a solid foundation for further exploring the wonders of the LEGO ® brick. Let’s take a look at some of the…
133
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
After I mentioned a Jurassic Park anecdote the other day , I watched the movie again. I must have seen it at least ten times now. This time, I researched every computer/software I spotted.
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Today I Rescued 7,234 Old GIFs
As Web standards have moved on, a particular 1990s library of GIFs has been hard to effectively archive and was at risk of being lost forever. So I swooped in, wrote some hacky code, and now a few thousand low-res images have been saved for posterity. Hurrah, I guess?
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Don't you mean extinct?
In 1993, Jurassic Park came out and revolutionized the use of CGI in films [1] . To the public the experience was magic. But for some of the people in the movie industry, it was a rude awakening.
136
Making Crash Bandicoot (2011)
In the summer of 1994 Naughty Dog, Inc. was still a two-man company, myself and my longtime partner Jason Rubin. Over the preceding eight years, we had published six games as a lean and mean duo, b…
137
The tech of 'Terminator 2' – an oral history (2017)
Ever since James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in 1991, I’ve been reading about the many ways ILM, led by visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, had to basically invent new way…
138
Late Bronze Age Collapse
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2026432 points316 commentscited by 4History & Retro Computing details
This week, by order of the ACOUP Senate, we’re talking about the Late Bronze Age Collapse (commonly abbreviated ‘LBAC’), the shocking collapse of the Late Bronze Age state system …
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I Did Not Kill Stanley Lieber: How to Draw (With 9front)
the computer lied
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Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks
This guide is written for practitioners wanting to create disk images of floppy disks with the intention of preserving them for the long-term. This guide will focus on 8-inch, 5.25-inch, 3.5-inch and 3-inch floppy disks and will only focus on getting material from these disks and will not cover writing disks. Other…
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Alternate clock designs and time systems
A day has 24 hours in it. That's 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. If you wonder why Americans don't understand the need for using the metric system then ask yourself why you use this inconsistent time measurement system.
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Composite Video on the NES: Why's it so wobbly?
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually...
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Run Windows 2000 on a DEC Alpha with a new es40 fork
Published: 05-07-2026 20:33 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
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Dolosse – a South African invention used over the world
All along the South African coast you find dolosse wherever coastal management is necessary to prevent tides and rough seas from eroding breakwaters, harbour walls, coastal construction. In Port El…
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The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 1: SimEverything
I’m still to this day just blown away by continental drift and things like that, stuff that most people think sounds pretty boring.
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America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report
America in 1926 was obsessed with technology, immigration, women, work, and money. Sound familiar?
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The Fall and Rise of Screwworm
Every spring, as sure as the seasons, and for generations unknown, screwworms began their annual march northward from their overwintering sanctuaries in Mexico and South Texas.
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A retrospective of my time on the internet
A thorough retrospective of my time on the internet.
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Exploring PDP-1 Lisp (1960)
Introduction to Lisp programming on a PDP-1, with a hands-on practical focus
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Sandia National Labs SA3000 8085 CPU
Back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Sandia National Laboratory (in Albuquerque NM USA) began building the capacity to design, fab, and test IC’s at scale (packaging was handled by Fairchild and Allied Signal). Why would a National Laboratory need the capacity to do this? To provide components that were not…