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The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 244 posts.
The Pascal language was named after Blaise Pascal (see picture), a French mathematician who was a pioneer in computer development history. In 1641, at the age of eighteen, Pascal constructed the first arithmetical machine, arguably the first computer. He would improve upon the instrument eight years later. In 1650…
I was inspired by Tom Scott’s excellent video and links here where he talks about a particular type of “Inogon” light used to guide ships through channels or harbours. The patent …
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
A sourced history of ThinkPad from IBM's 1992 700C to Lenovo's 2026 AI workstations: TrackPoint, keyboards, X-series, T-series and P-series.
Let's look at this little gizmo Sony produced in the early 1990s.
A blog about software craft and quality
The memory management in DOS is simple, but that simplicity may be deceptive. There are several rather interesting pitfalls that programming documentation often does not mention.
To kick off MARCHintosh, I built this tiny pint-sized Macintosh with a Raspberry Pi Pico: This is not my own doing—I just assembled the parts to run Matt Evans' Pico Micro Mac firmware on a Raspberry Pi Pico (with an RP2040). The version I built outputs to a 640x480 VGA display at 60 Hz, and allows you to plug in a…
Photos from three very different computer museums in the Netherlands
In 1994, a teenager wanted to be noticed in the ANSI art scene. So he created "Inspector Dangerfuck": a profane, stoned, gray-skinned cartoon detective.
Introduction to Lisp programming on a PDP-1, with a hands-on practical focus
One little step toward UNIX
I can hardly believe I’m writing a blog post about a game that came out 27 years ago, but here we are. Lucasfilm, at one time had a gaming subsidiary called Lucasarts, and they produced somet…
The microcomputer is an incredible, revolutionary invention. Like the electric light, the printing press, and the wheel, it has changed the world. Without microcomputers, the internet, and perhaps even "life as we know it" would not be possible!
One bad thing about archeologists is that some of the successful ones get a big head. People used to think the Olmecs, who made these colossal stone heads, were contemporary with the Mayans. But in…
Two years of nightmarish smiles and makeup before anyone laid hands on Mimic Systems' actual product.
I wrote the chapter on app icon history for The iOS App Icon Book . The other day I found an old note stashed away where I had started researching the macOS…
As is typical here in the Floodgap lab, it all started so innocently: rebuilding a flaky Apple Workgroup Server 9150, the odd duck of the Wo...
Suppose you want to find out how much you weigh. It’s easy enough – get a scale, stand on it, and read the number. Now suppose you want to know how much the Earth weighs. You get out a scale and…hm…
the computer lied
What the PNR locator on your boarding pass actually contains, and why the fare calculation line on your e-ticket is written in a currency that does not exist.
You’ve read the title. Aircraft carriers of where powered by what? I was just as surprised as you are, but yes, they really did exist. I now introduce you to USS Wolverine and USS Sable:
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…
How America’s golden age of aviation safety came to an end
One of the most fascinating sequences in Atari’s arcade manufacturing process in the early 80s, was the application of the fabulous artwork that adorned all of its cabinets from the golden ag…
Oof, what a beauty. In the 1960s, four Porsche 912s were customized for use as police cars in Japan. This one, which was used in Kanagawa until 1973, is the onl
Fun things to do with big computers
