Back again with another roundup of websites promoting some history. This weeks focus is on the computers and other machines.

Technologizer has come through in the past year or so with some really fun looks at technology of the past. Here are three:

15 Classic PC Design Mistakes

Weird Laptop Designs

132 Years of the videophone

It’s amazing how ugly and non-functional computers were in the early stages. They don’t seem to be anything like cars. Old cars, some of them anyways, become classics. They were made to look good. Somehow, I guess, computer manufacturers didn’t think computers would need any style. Sure they were made for businesses, but beige…. for everything? One of Apple’s biggest successes has been to transform the look of personal computers. No matter what you think about Apple as a company and Steve Jobs as a person, at least their stuff has some style (which has it’s own interesting history in that many styles come from old Braun products by Dieter Rams).

Old Computer Database

Small Gallery of Old Computers

Speaking of old computers… The Obsolete Technology Website has a plethora of information, a veritable archive, of old technology. It’s good to see someone is keeping the history of our tech junk. Newscientist also steps in with a small gallery of ancient (read older than 30 years) technology.

Macintosh Startup Chimes

Finally, a trip down memory lane with all of the old Macintosh start up sounds at Geekology.

I had moment of early morning, jump out of bed and write it down, inspiration the other day.

It was the equation of history.

The Present = (Past Realities) + (Hopes for the Future)

The present, in very simple terms, is a combination of things that have already happened and what is hoped to happen in the future.

History is the study of this equation as it relates to individuals, corporations, governments, nations, etc.

Think about how you think about yourself, for example. You might be like me and when you think about yourself you have this knowledge of things you’ve done, seen, and heard. Then you compare that with how you think you should be.

A historical study does the same thing. It tries to figure out what the present is for any given time period, event, or issue by putting together the past events and the ideals that people left behind.

Anyhow, that’s a quick, not well thought out explanation of a very early morning inspiring thought. As those types of thoughts go, they often don’t pan out when brought under the light of a conscious brain.

What space junky, almost historian, geek would I be without posting a little bit about some of the best type of history in existence. I refer, of course, to the history of man’s endeavors to explore space. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to step on a celestial body other than Earth. Michael Collins waited in the Command capsule as the two American astronauts made human history.

So here are a number of resources and articles describing some cool things about space flight.

Historic Spacecraft is an archive of space vehicles and other things space related. They have a lot of photos of vehicles, suits, and such. They also have posters and such for sell, if you’re inclined to have something on your wall. They also have stats and dates for all of the rockets and vehicles listed. A great source for photos for all your space history needs. Also really cool is a list of all completed Space Shuttle missions. Space Shuttle Discovery has flown the most missions, 36, so far (June 2009) with a total of 126 missions. The Space Shuttle Enterprise never made it to space, but you can see it at the Udvar-Hazy National Air and Space Museum in Dulles, VA. I’ve been there a couple of times, and it is extremely awesome.

Next up from Flightglobal is an interactive timeline of sorts, with lots of information about the missions, flights, computers, physics and people who made it possible to put man on the moon. Most amazing about the whole flight, is that everything was based on theory. There was no way to test the actual theoretical physics without flying to the moon and back. “Although the theoretical physics of travelling to the Moon had been laid down before the advent of the Apollo missions, this was the first time a series of manned missions had put the theory into practice.”

Speaking of computers, Linux.com has a neat write up about the software used to guide the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the moon and back. It’s incredible to think that they were able to do such an amazing thing with technology comparable to today’s calculators. All of the code used punch cards and took hours to see if it was written properly. Jerry Bostick described the process in the Linux.com article:

“We would give instructions to the programs by punching cards,” Bostick said. “You had to wait at least 12 hours to see if it would work right.” The early programming was done in the real-time computing complex in Houston using IBM 7094 computers with 64K of memory. There were no hard disks. All the data was stored on magnetic tape, with each computer having about eight tape drives. Most programs used for the mission were written in Fortran, Bostick said. “After Apollo 1, we upgraded to the biggest and the best equipment that government money could buy, the IBM 360 with an unheard of 1MB of memory. We went all the way from 64K to 1MB.”

Moving from space computers to space computer games, the Technologizer has a great piece about a well loved space game, Lunar Lander. This game started out as a text-based game written by a high school student. It became popular and was later turned into countless graphical spin offs. I’m playing one on the iPod Touch a bit too much at the moment. You can see I made the top 20 players for a while!

Finally, New Scientist has a number of interesting articles relating to the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. One article addresses with the ethics and issues with the moon being a historic spot. Wherever there is a piece of human debris or footstep, it’s historically valuable. Should all of these sites and artifacts and footprints be protected? What happens when/if tourists are able to visit the moon? Who’s going to be the museum curator and the tourist guides? I’ll take that job!

Another New Scientist article lists several reasons why the moon is still relevant to science, for government, commercial enterprise and the normal guy.

Lastly, New Scientist has a neat interactive map showing the many multi-national places on the moon where humans have left their mark and made exploration.

I finally figured it all out, and got a working version of Zotero’s development on trunk for the past year in code_swarm.

Next, I need to find or make some cool electronic music to play while watching it.

[vimeo 2117995]

There’s a really cool new way to visualize the creation of software. It’s called code_swarm. Developed by Michael Ogawa as a way to do just that, visualize the creation of software. He’s a sort of software anthropologist. Not so much interested in the software, but how people interact to create it.

Here’s an example using the programming language Python (something I want to learn one of these days).

[vimeo 1093745 400 302]

I think this is a great way to visualize history as well. I can imagine this being used with another idea I had a while back. Instead of tracking files and creators, track people and their movements. This would be great for looking at a family history. It would be cool to have a GEDCOM file of thousands of ancestors, plug it into this application, then watch as your family members come alive on a map, move around, and fade into history. I have ancestors from Sweden, Germany, England, and many places in the United States. It would be awesome to see their history plotted out this way.

It could even work on a smaller scale. How bout your own life’s travels plotted out.

Keeping on track with my readings course with Dan Cohen about history and new media (which I need to post about), how does this type of new media affect the study of history? If we plug in the details about an ancestors decision to move from, say, Sweden to Utah, can we better understand how individuals affect many generations afterwards? Will seeing the large number of ancestors in one place affect how we view ourselves in life? My thinking here is that we’ll see on one screen a large number of people living and moving, and eventually making you. If there were other important events plotted during the same timeline (perhaps a better term is a moveline), would that help us better understand the context of our ancestors history?

Lots of stuff to think about. And a large project to implement. Fortunately the source code for code_swarm is open source and freely available.

I have this thought, and it was brought to mind again by an article on Wired which linked to this artists (Jason Salavon) work with the US census data. Basically, he took the US census data over 200 years and created an image with a ribbon of color representing each county.

My idea is similar, kind of. While thinking about projects to do for my history and maps class this semester, and while talking with a colleague, I wondered how one could graphically represent ones genealogy. Most of us in the United States have ancestors that came from somewhere else. Many of us have ancestors that came from multiple somewhere elses. Looking at my ancestry alone I claim Arizona, Colorado, Utah, England, Sweeden, Germany and I’m sure several other places I don’t yet know of. One thought as to how to do this would be with a world map and lines and dots representing locations and familial connections. The lines and dots would be in gradients of color, each color representing a date. I tried doing a mock up in Photoshop quickly, but it wasn’t working right. I’ll have to do it in Flash, since that behaves like I expect. Flash might be a better platform anyways, because the map is then dynamic and can be dragged, zoomed, and dots and lines can be given data associated with them.

Omeka, another fine product produced by CHNM, has released the public beta. This is a great tool for museums and other places (or individuals) who want to create online exhibits.

In other news, there is now a growing movement to archive old skills that are no longer used. Mr. Scoble started a list of obsolete skills on his blog and later made a wiki about it. Now everybody can contribute their obsolete skills. Not only is this a humorous way to look at the evolving world of technology, but it provides a useful archive for anyone who might run across the need to use one of these obsolete skills.

Part 1
Part 2
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Part 11
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Part 13 I
Part 13 II

Wired has a neat little article/slideshow depicting the process of designing the Google logo. It’s interesting to see the first design compared to the last (current) design, and how similar they are.

Along with this article, take a look at Google’s archive of past logos for holidays and other events. It might be worth a look into the different holidays and events that are portrayed by Google’s logo.

Also, on a sad note, a bit of technology fades into history. The Polaroid instant photos have been discontinued (over the course of the past two years). The thrill of an instant photo was one of my child hood memories. Something my children won’t have. Now we we’d have to truck along a printer to get the same instantaneousness.

For the one or two besides me who actually visit the site, you’ll notice a change in looks. I stumbled upon this theme a few days ago, and thought to give it a try. Historically speaking, well actually it’s very forward thinking, this theme employs a cool idea. The theme is funded by a couple of sites, and all they require is to have their links un-obtrusively available in the footer at all times. So, you can use the theme free if you become a billboard for the funders. They are not inappropriate sites, so I don’t mind using the theme.

You might also notice a new page tab towards the top called DigitalMaps. This links to a forum I set up for my Hist 798 class at GMU this semester. We’re going to make an atlas. Check out the forum for our class ideas and progress. We’re going to present our work at THATCamp (mentioned in the previous post). Should be lots of fun.