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Unix and Multics (2019)
Story from the development of the Multics operating system. Unix, our famous child.
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Trilobites killed by volcanic ash
Some of the most perfectly preserved trilobite fossils ever found have revealed details of the extinct arthropod unknown until now.
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The CIA-in-Chile Scandal at 50
Washington, D.C., September 9, 2024 – Fifty years ago, as the New York Times prepared to break a major exposé on CIA covert operations in Chile, the architect of those operations, Henry Kissinger, misled President Gerald Ford about clandestine U.S. efforts to undermine the elected government of Socialist Party leader…
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Ancient Egyptian Stone-Drilling (1983)
<p>More than most technical procedures in the ancient world, drilling of hard stone such as quartz and granite has evoked […]</p>
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CRT Manufacturing
Explore CRT lamp history at vintageTEK. View TekTalk and TekWeek articles, photos, and PDFs documenting CRT lamp and gun assembly production.
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Prayer, Placement, and Absolution: Peter Hristoff on Islamic Prayer Rugs (2015)
Artist in Residence Peter Hristoff meditates on the role of Islamic prayer rugs (seccades) and the role they play in his own creative output.
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Fifty years of the personal computer operating system
Fifty years ago, PC software pioneer Gary Kildall demonstrated CP/M, the first commercially successful personal computer operating system.
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The death of Glitch, the birth of Slack
[This post is about the day that Glitch failed, and how that failure created the opportunity to make Slack. We're sharing it here (out of chronological order) to mark 12 years since the famous pivot.] “We have to shut down the game.” Stewart Butterfield said. I looked at him
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The history of Alt+number sequences
Code pages and custom keyboard handling.
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The $500M Dollar Typo
It's amazing how a series of small but unfortunate events can quickly add up to one very expensive problem. Like the time one person fat-fingered the wrong year on a mainframe JCL job, Ronald Reagan died, and the US postal service lost $500 million.
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1,100 Declassified U.S. Nuclear Targets
1100 Declassified U.S. Nuclear Targets from 1956 on the interactive NukeMap. Choose a city and a bomb size, and detonate. See what happens.
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Exploring Bauhaus: Revolutionary design school that shaped modern world
Bauhaus was a german art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that transcended traditional boundaries, boldly embracing the fusion of form and function. The founder of the school, Walter Gropius, believed in the "fundamental unity of the arts" and he anticipated the challenges that 20th-ce
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Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master: The Medieval Guild (2018)
I became fascinated with guilds when I moved to Germany. Being an avid reader of all medieval history I could get my hands on, I was well aware of the Hansa (slang for Hanseatic) League’s ris…
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DHL pioneered the sharing economy (2016)
DHL was guaranteed timely delivery of critical business documents by giving away airplane tickets. That made it was a pioneer in the sharing economy.
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Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and early object-oriented programming (2016)
Since 2008, over a hundred billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store onto users’ iPhones or iPads. However, the technology and tools powering the mobile “app revolution” are not themselves new, but rather have a long history spanning over thirty years, one which connects back to the beginnings of…
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The history of Monokai
The history of the Monokai color scheme and the evolution of Monokai Pro
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The origins of the steam engine (2023)
An essay with interactive animated diagrams
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Edward C. Stone, 1936-2024
Caltech mourns the loss of Edward C. Stone, leader of humanity’s first foray into interstellar space.