Fast Links: Historical Documents | Archives | Documentaries | Artistry
NOTE: Since these links all come from web sources, some links may fail due to a video or file being moved or removed.
The Origins of Computing - updated 01/15/2020
A Brief History of Numerical Systems
Chinese Abacus: Summing 1 to 50
Napier's Bones: How They Work
Wilhelm Schikard's Calculating Clock
Pascaline Replica (Additionner avec la réplique de la Pascaline 1645)
How the Pascaline Works (Mechanics)
Stepped Drum (used in Liebniz machine)
Liebniz Machine: Animation of 748 + 219
Liebniz Machine: Animation of 2748 / 21 (part 1)
Liebniz Machine: Animation of 2748 / 21 (part 2)
Thomas Arithmometer Demonstration
Thomas Arithmometer Mechanics
Comptometer Model F
Comptometer (mechanics) (watch first 90 seconds)
CURTA Calculator Demonstration
CURTA Calculator (mechanics)
Babbage and His Inventions - updated 01/17/2020
How an 1803 Jacquard Loom Led to Computer Technology
Jacquard weaving
Charles Babbage (University of Portsmouth)
False Dawn: The Babbage Engine
Difference Engine in operation (CHM Tour Demonstration)
The Greatest Machine That Never Was (Ted-Ed Talk on the Analytical Engine)
Science in Seconds - Ada Lovelace
Calculating Ada - The Countess of Computing (BBC Documentary)
Punched Card Machines - updated 01/21/20
Hollerith tabulating machine
Computer Punch Cards Historical Overview (to 5:45)
IBM Ever Onward - A Preview of Revolution
The Making of IBM - The New Deal (1:06:49 - 1:11:25)
Your Social Security - Selling The New Deal (12:30 - 14:50) (IBM machines in use)
Analog Computing and Computing Theory - updated 01/26/2020
The Antikythera Mechanism
Orrery
Ernst Planimeter
Tide Prediction Computer (Analog Computing)
Analog Computers of Vannevar Bush (from Vannevar Bush Symposium in 1995)
(start at 28:32)
Animation of Differential Analyzer solving the Differential Equation y'' = -y
Theatrical Short Film showing a Differential Analyzer (Univ. of California)
Forgotten Genius - Boole (part 2)
Tech Icons: Claude Shannon
Kurt Godel and Alan Turing (starting at 8:00)
Alan Turing - Celebrating the life of a genius - Cambridge University
Turing Machine example - Counting
World War II and the Advent of Modern Computing - updated 01/28/2020
Refurbished exhibition of the Harvard Mark I
Authors@Google: Kurt Beyer - Author of Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age
(Aiken: 15:49)
Reflections on Harvard Mark I - Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper on David Letterman's Late Night Show
Atanasoff Describes the Invention of the ABC
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer in Operation
Story of Konrad Zuse (Discovery)
Konrad Zuse and his first computer of the world (subtitled)
Zuse at the Computer History Museum
George Stibitz (AT&T Archives)
Cracking the Enigma Code,
Colossus: Creating a Giant
ENIAC Computer History (Remastered)
Jean Bartik and the ENIAC Women
ENIAC and Beyond (History Channel)
ENIAC: The First Computer - University of Pennsylvania
Post-War Computing in the late 1940s and 1950s - updated 02/03/2020
John von Neumann Documentary (1966)
EDVAC (and a talk by Mauchley)
Manchester Baby Computer
Programming the EDSAC
EDSAC Re-creation Project
UNIVAC Commercial
UNIVAC - Then And Now (7:41-11:32)
Authors@Google: Kurt Beyer - Author of Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age
- Hopper and Compilers: 27:40)
UNIVAC during Presidential Election 1952
Film Scene: Desk Set (1957) - Automation Scare of the 1950s
Early Calculators and IBM Data Processors and Printers
IBM 705 Mainframe Data Center/IBM 650
The Electronic Coach - use of an IBM650 and a young Don Knuth!
IBM Recruiting Ad
Memory and the Invention of the Transistor - updated 02/05/2020
Jay W. Forrester and the WHIRLWIND Computer
In Your Defense: SAGE
ON GUARD! The Story of SAGE (1956)
IBM Sage Computer Ad, 1960
Manchester Baby and the Birth of Computer Memory (Williams-Kilburn Tube)
EDSAC Replica Project - Mercury Delay Lines
Mercury Delay Lines (Computer History Museum)
Early Vacuum Tube Computers
Vacuum Tubes and Early Computers
The Inventors of the Transistor Discuss Their Success (AT&T Archives)
Robert Noyce Interview
Integrated Circuit Invention (TI focus on Jack Kilby)
IBM Domination in the 1960s and 1970s - updated 02/09/2020
The IBM 1401
News Report: Recovery of an IBM 1401
IBM System/360
The IBM System/360 - in New Zealand!
The IBM/360 Project - Fred Brooks interview
Steve Jobs on the Mythical Man-Month
IBM System/370 Control Panel
IBM System/390
Mini-Computers, Portable Memory and Workstations - updated 02/11/2020
Digital Man Digital World (Digital Equipment Corp)
Ken Olsen (DEC) 1957-1989
Restored PDP-1 Demonstration
PDP-8 Presentation #1
PDP-8 Presentation #2
PDP-8 Presentation #3
PDP-11/40 Minicomputer Running a Program
Timesharing Explained (MIT) (part 1)
(part 2)
The UNIX Operating System
2012 Milennium Technolgy Prize: Linus Torvalds
Sun Microsystems 25 Years of Innovation
IBM RAMAC (Early Film)
Search at San Jose (IBM RAMAC)
How Old School Cassette Tape Drives Worked
How Old School Floppy Drives Worked
Iomega Zip Drive
The Microprocessor and the Personal Computer - updated 02/17/2020
Altair Computer:
Front Panel Layout,
Front Panel Programming,
Loading 4K Basic from Paper Tape
History of Microsoft:
1975,
1976,
1977,
1978,
1979,
1980,
1981,
1982,
1983,
1984
History of Apple Computer - Steve Jobs (1980)
IBM Centennial Film - IBM PC
How IBM Chose Microsoft for their Operating System (Triumph of the Nerds)
How IBM Ended Up Using MS-DOS rather than CP/M (Computer Chronicles episode)
History of IBM PC - Ctrl Alt Del
Compaq and Hyperion - The First IBM Clones
Commercials:
Apple II,
TRS-80,
Commodore 64,
Timex Sinclair 1000,
IBM PC,
Compaq
GUIs and the Rise of Microsoft - updated 02/19/2020
Steve Jobs visits Xerox PARC (dramatization)
Adele Goldberg presenting Smalltalk-80 from Xerox PARC
Apple Macintosh Commercial 1984
Apple Macintosh Launch with Steve Jobs
History of Microsoft (continued):
1985,
1986,
1987,
1988,
1989,
1990,
1991,
1992,
1993,
1994,
1995
Microsoft Windows 1.0 Commercial 1986
Triumph of the Nerds Part III (Great Artists Steal)
Computer Chronicles: The Macintosh Computer Part 1 - featuring Gary Kildall!
IBM OS/2 Commercial 1992,
OS/2 Warp Commercial (where's the OS? Sorry, IBM)
Microsoft Windows 95 Commercial (compare this to the OS/2 Warp commercial)
The Internet - updated 02/23/2020
Memex Animation
DARPA: The Formative Years 1958-1975
ARPAnet - The Team Behind The Internet
Computer Networks - Arpanet, 1972 (1 of 2)
Computer Networks - Arpanet, 1972 (2 of 2)
Interview with Vint Cerf
Interview with Bob Kahn
Raymond Tomlinson - Internet Hall of Fame - inventor of email
History of Ethernet (Bob Metcalfe)
25 Years of DNS
Internet History:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6
Programming Languages and Artificial Intelligence - updated 02/25/2020
The Beginnings of FORTRAN
Oral History of John McCarthy - Lisp and AI
The World's First COBOL Compilers
The Birth of BASIC
Niklaus Wirth interview (Algol, Pascal)
The History of Standard ML
The Design of C++ - lecture by Bjarne Stroustrup
James Gosling: The Success of Java
Herbert Simon - Early Days of AI
Allen Newell - Desires and Diversions (1991 CMU)
Marvin Minsky interview
Fifth Generation Computers (The Computer Chronicles, 1984)
Deep Blue beats Garry Kasparov in 1997
History of Robots (CES 2016)
The World Wide Web and Social Computing - updated 02/27/2020
Searching the Internet (1995):
Gopher,
FTP and Archie,
WAIS,
Webcrawler and Yahoo
Marc Andreesen on the Early Days of Browsing
What Google, Facebook And Apple Can Learn From Microsoft's 1998 Antitrust Fight
Spam stems from Monty Python comedy sketch
The History of Wikipedia
The Google Boys (Early History of Google)
Mark Zuckerberg: Building the Facebook Empire
Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos (FRONTLINE)
Napster Documentary: Culture of Free
Kim Dotcom - 60 Minutes Interview
Sketch of the Analytical
Engine Invented by Charles Babbage by L.F. Manabrea with notes upon the
memoir by the translator Ada Lovelace, Countess of Lovelace
A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator
by the staff of the Computation Laboratory at Harvard University
(including Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper)
On Computable
Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, by Alan
Turing
Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing
UNIVAC Flow-Matic Brochure (1957)
by Remington Rand Corporation
As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush (in Atlantic Monthly)
Man-Computer Symbiosis, by J.C.R. Licklider (1960)
Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits - Gordon Moore's original paper about his "law" (Intel)
A Modern Day Tragedy: The Digital Equipment Story by Peter S. Delisi
History of Programming Languages - O'Reilly Publishing poster
Evolution of the Web -
history of web browsers and technologies
Internet 101: A Brief History of HTML
Traub-McCorduck Collection - Carnegie Mellon University, Hunt Library
Computer History Museum
- take a virtual field trip to Silicon Valley
Intel Museum - another Silicon Valley museum from one of its initial successes
The Centre for Computing History
- take a virtual field trip to the UK
Microsoft Visitor Center - some history about one of the world's biggest software companies
IBM Archives - dig deeper into the rich history of IBM
Apple Macintosh - 30 Years - history of one of the most influential computers in history - NO LONGER AVAILABLE
History of Digital Equipment Corporation - timeline from boston.com
History of Binary and Other Nondecimal Numeration -
by Anton Glaser, Pennsylvania State University
Java simulation of the Kepler Tide-Predicting Machine by Bill Casselman
Instrumental Analysis by Vannevar Bush
A Formal Description of System/360 - written in APL! (via IEEE Xplore)
Obsolete Computer Museum - the graveyard for computers
Calculating Ada - The Countess of Computing (2015):
view on YouTube
The Machine That Changed The World (1992):
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5
Triumph of the Nerds (1996):
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3
Nerds 2.0.1 (1998):
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3
Biography: Bill Gates (1998):
view on Youtube
Code Rush - Netscape Mozilla Documentary (2000):
view on Youtube
Modern Marvels: Ancient Discoveries (2004):
view on Youtube
Biography: Thomas Watson Jr. (2005):
1,
2,
3,
4,
5
Biography: The Google Boys (2005):
1,
2,
3,
4,
5
Download: The True Story of the Internet (2008):
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4
Steve Jobs - Billion Dollar Hippy [BBC] (2011):
View on Youtube
Jane Smiley - Interview: Who Invented the Computer?:
View on Youtube
American Experience: Silicon Valley (2013):
view on PBS Video