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Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens (2014)
A weblog about politics, technology, and culture
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History & Retro Computing
The most popular blog posts about history & retro computing on Hacker News. 4,253 posts.
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A very long way from home: early Byzantine finds at the far ends of the world
The following brief post is once again offered largely for the sake of interest, being concerned with the furthest limits of the distributio...
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Tanaka Hisashige, builder of the Myriad Year Clock (2016)
Japan's greatest inventor whose life span a formative period in the nation's history, Tanaka Hisashige built the Myriad Year Clock, a 1000-part masterpiece that's today a national treasure.
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Running BBS Door Games on Windows 10 with GameSrv and DOSBox
I continue to enjoy seeing what can be done with WSL (Windows Subsystem for ...
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Xbox Hacks: The A20 (2021)
In the early 2000s the Xbox was released. We are nearing the 20 year anniversary so its time to dive into the A20 "hack".
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Xerox Alto Source Code
Depending on your age, your first computer might have been an Apple II, a Radio Shack TRS-80, an IBM PC, an Apple Macintosh, or another of the early personal computers. If you missed these early machines the first time around, perhaps you have seen them in the Personal Computer section of the Revolution exhibit at the…
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The Man Who Almost Never Succeeded (2012)
## The Rather Sad Story of the Father of American Photography It’s been a long time since I did a photography history article. I generally prefer the early days of photography. People just were, I…
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David Kahn has died
David Kahn has died. His groundbreaking book, The Codebreakers, was the first serious book I read about codebreaking, and one of the primary reasons I entered this field. He will be missed. EDITED TO ADD (2/4): Funeral website. EDITED TO ADD (2/10): New York Times obituary.
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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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Here be four bits of dragons: the Mattel D&D Computer Game and the TMS1100
When my parents sold the house and moved to the great white north, they dropped off a few boxes of my stuff that was still in the garage. ...
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How the Sears Catalog Undermined White Supremacy in the Jim Crow South
Sears has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to close hundreds of stores in an effort to keep the company afloat. The Sears catalog is perhaps one of the
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The 68000 Wars, Part 2: Jack Is Back
Jack Tramiel, the computer executive most likely to be compared to Darth Vader. I wonder why?
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Prof. dr. N.G. de Bruijn, 1918-2012
Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics
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RoboCop – Breaking the Law. H0ffman Cracks RoboCop Arcade from DataEast
It’s time to take down the future of law enforcement. Following on from my discovery that RoboCop arcade has bootleg protection, see here , I decided it would be fun to crack it. TL;DR –…
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The King doesn't own all the swans in Britain
So who does?
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One Year into the War in Ukraine
Today marks the end of the first year of Putin’s War in Ukraine. I will not call it an anniversary, because I don’t think anyone is celebrating. Nevertheless I think this makes a useful…
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The Life of MS-DOS
First released on August 12, 1981, MS-DOS became the foundation for business computing for almost two decades. This article details different versions and releases that all stemmed from Gary Kildall's QDOS.
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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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“May You Live in Interesting Times”
Chinese Curse? Austen Chamberlain? Frederic R. Coudert? Joseph Chamberlain? Diplomatic Staff? Albert Camus? Arthur C. Clarke? Robert F. Kennedy? Hillary Rodham Clinton?
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The Rise and Fall of Ashton-Tate (2023)
Vulcan & dBASE