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E-COM: The $40M USPS project to send email on paper
E-COM was a $40 million US Postal Service project to deliver email on paper. Why it failed, and why spammers were its only real customers.
Topics /
History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
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Born for it – How the image of software developers came about
Where did the common image of the socially-awkward, white, male programmer come from?
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Fatal Dose – Radiation Deaths linked to AECL Computer Errors (1994)
How a series of simple computer errors sabotaged a state-of-the-art medical wonder.
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What happened to Tandy computers
Tandy took a chance in 1984 and it paid off, then they played it safe too long
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USN AN-1 Submarine Aircraft Carrier (2018)
**US Navy SubmarineAircraft Carrier design** In the late 1950s the US Navy experimented with the concept of aircraft carrying submarines armed with jet fighters… Read More >….
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Let's all meet up in the Y2K
Back in 2024 I posted a few of these on Twitter (thread reader) after digging out old photos from the dot-com boom. I was working in London at a digital agen...
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The long strange trip to Java (1996)
I've debated with myself for several years about whether or not to write this down. After so much time has passed, the facts are confused, 20/20 hindsight creeps in, and selective memory plays a role in how fairly I can portray the events. Many reporters have asked me my version of these past few years, several have…
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If the news is fake, imagine history
Access to the Network has changed our perception of the present and the perception of the past.
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PC keyboard hides an interesting secret
I found this keyboard on eBay recently, although it wasn’t quite the one I was looking for I still think it is interesting. Let me show you why. This is the keyboard, and you would be forgiven for…
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An oral history of the AIM away message
Speed up product development from ideation to launch. Align teams, break tool silos and ship what customers need in one AI-powered visual platform.
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The history of Alt+number sequences
Code pages and custom keyboard handling.
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The button that isn’t
Is there a big red button that can launch nuclear war? No — but thinking about why there isn't is a nice way into the complexities of command and control issues.
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The origin of “tweet” at Twitter (2013)
Last week, one of my colleagues informed me that the word “tweet” was now included in the Oxford English Dictionary (see “Quiet announcement” at the end of the page.) The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a […]
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jwz: Apple recently broke Ctrl-Y
Ever since MacOS 10.0 was released, text fields have supported Emacs bindings for the single-character Control commands, showing that there were people inside Apple (and, presumably, NeXT) who were right-thinking and sensible. But some time late in the 10.6 release cycle, and continuing into 10.7.1, the binding for…
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Atari Centipede’s Hidden Code Trap
During the peak of Atari’s success, one of the more unlikely tasks given to some of its coin-operated programmers, was to analyse potentially pirated versions of their games. This week, I tho…
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M.U.L.E. 40th Anniversary Special
Written and copyrighted by Christian A. Schiller , World of M.U.L.E. curator, with contributions from Andrew Dieffenbach, M.U.L.E. Online developer. No reprint without permission. Happy to get feedback on this feature, either via the contact form or one of the following social media accounts: Facebook , Twitter or…
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The Internet Free Zone (1997)
The Internet Free Zone Home Page.
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The History of Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures” Album Art
I had no intention of ever learning this much about Joy Division or pulsars, but because of my apt to be a law abiding citizen, I was forced to research the about the ubiquitous design made popular by the British band and artist Peter Saville for a t-shirt project I’m heading on SixPrizes. In short, […]
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The Lava Lamp Just Won't Quit
In the 1960s, a British nudist invented a lamp that inadvertently became the poster child for psychedelia. Thirty years later, it came back with a vengeance.
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Cartoons in Tektronix Schematics
Explore Tektronix schematic cartoons with vintageTEK. Discover hidden humorous drawings in manuals and schematics from classic Tektronix gear.
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Life Off the Grid, Part 2: Playing Ultima Underworld
I rarely play or even see current games; the demands of this historical project of mine simply don’t allow for it. Thankfully, though, being a virtual time traveler does have its advantages. Just when I’m starting to feel a little sorry for myself, having heard about some cool new release I just don’t have time for, I…
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Soyuz spacecraft digital clock teardown
We recently obtained a clock that flew on a Soyuz space mission. 1 The clock, manufactured in 1984, is much more complex inside than you'd ...
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Bread, How Did They Make It?
Thanks to our helpful volunteer narrator, this entire post series is now also available in audio format! This essay will hopefully be the first post in a series (II, III, IV, A) covering some of th…
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Map showing the homeland of every character in Homer’s Iliad
This is a map showing where all of the characters originated in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. I know Greece is small by today’s standards, but it was surprising
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Recompiling the Lost Vikings
In my previous blog post I talked about reverse engineering the virtual machine used to implement objects in the Lost Vikings. The Lost Vikings was released in 1993 by Silicon and Synapse, now bett…
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Tim Berners-Lee Confirms The Exact Location Where the Web Was Invented: France
[ Update, Feb 2014. Plaque placed outside room where web was invented.] Success (of sorts)! ARS Electronica have given an award to Tim Berners-Lee and CERN for the invention of the web. They had he…
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8088 PC Speaker MOD player: How it’s done
The last 100 seconds of 8088 MPH sound very different to the rest of the demo. The end tune is actually a 4-channel Amiga MOD file (which you can download here ) composed by coda . Playing back a MOD through PC speaker on such a slow machine has never been done before. Here is how we did it.