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Leonardo Da Vinci’s Self-Powered Cart (2021)
A club for Meccano enthusiasts in London, holding four meetings each year and a public Meccano Show in Falconwood.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 97 posts.
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The Resilience of Costco (2018)
For 40 years, Costco has succeeded with a simple formula: reinvest merchandising profits into lower prices and better products; be a disciplined operator; and treat customers and employees well. But with greater share of shopping moving online, it’s fair to wonder if the company's best da
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A single line of code brought down a half-billion euro rocket launch
And it was so avoidable! The bug was from a piece of dead code, left over from the previous Ariane 4 mission a decade before.
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When XML in Word Became Illegal
Plus! A Sonos v. Google surprise, a 101 case rejects cert, and Celgene's REVLIMID
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A closer look at the Tabula Peutingeriana
This map story is about one specific map, the only one remaining from the Roman …
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Savings and Loan Crisis 1980–1989
In the 1980s, the financial sector suffered through a period of distress that was focused on the nation's savings and loan industry.
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History is just one damn thing after another
This is a short story about what happened to the U.S.
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Admiral Rickover's 'Paper Reactor' Memo (1953)
Rickover's famous speech about the distinction between academic (paper) reactors and practical reactors.
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Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)
Shocking new research confirms the ancient Carthaginians ritually sacrificed children as offerings to the gods, overturning decades of denial. Uncover the dark secrets of this long-forgotten civilisation.
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Hippo Meat Nearly Became an American Food Staple
Visit our Ripley’s Believe It or Not! aquariums and attractions, today. Immerse yourself in a world of wonder and create memories with your friends and family.
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I come here not to bury Delphi, but to praise it (2019)
What helps a programming language gain traction? Patrick Martin remembers why he used to use Delphi.
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Robots have been about to take all the jobs for 100 years
We will be exploring the history of fears about technological unemployment.
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Who invented the alphabet?
Who really invented the alphabet? Although we are still uncertain about precisely where the world’s most influential communication system came from, we know more than we did 20 years ago.
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All IP addresses are equal? “Dot-zero” addresses are less equal (2013)
In theory, all IP addresses are the same, and you can allocate them at random without a problem. 192.168.1.2 is certainly not better or worse than 192.168.1.15, right? But, in practice, certain IP addresses are regarded as "special" by some implementations and do not yield the same user experience.…
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A Brief Introduction to Military Pillboxes
Explore some of the anti-invasion defences built across England during the First and Second World Wars.
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The Viterbi Algorithm at 50 (2017)
In a noisy world, it allows you to be heard.
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Enigma Crypto Transmission from KPH at 426 KHz and Shortwave
DA was a part of our KPH project from the beginning. She learned her trade at US Coast Guard master station NMC, adjacent to KPH. At NMC she earned the coveted gold lightning bolt radnoman’s insignia (there was no such thing as a radiowoman in the Coast Guard). She also acquired the salty vocabulary she needed to hold…
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2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 was awarded to Claudia Goldin "for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes"
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The last day of Constantinople
Discover how the fall of Constantinople in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire and transformed the great city into Ottoman Istanbul.
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Nobel Prize Chemistry 2023
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 was awarded to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Aleksey Yekimov "for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots"
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Steve Jobs and the actually usable computer (2011)
At a sad time at which the world has just lost Steve Jobs, it is well to reflect on some of the things which he, his passion, and his creations have given us, as now the technical community should take...
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UCLA floor tiles decoded, pay homage to first internet message (2013)
A hidden message left by a UCLA architect in 2011 was recently uncovered in Boelter Hall, where sharp-eyed passersby can spot a coded note in the pattern of floor tiles.
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The Remarkable Ivan Sutherland
CHM releases to the public for the first time a full oral history with Ivan Sutherland, pioneer of computer graphics, virtual reality, asynchronous systems, and more.
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Google's 25th Birthday
For Google’s 25th birthday, we’re celebrating alongside our users with a special Doodle and some surprises in Search.
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