Many Mechanical Machines

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.

40th anniversary of the moon landing

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.

Apollo missions posterHistoric 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.

Apollo 11 interactive guideNext 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.”

apollo 11 softwareSpeaking 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.”

lunar lander gamesMoving 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!

19th place

museum moonFinally, 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.

interactive moon mapLastly, 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.

New face, new forum

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.

Evolution and history of the computer interface, Macintosh style.

Appleinsider is my go to source for Mac news. What I really like about their articles are the in depth, historical explanations of Mac’s new OS features. Some places just tell you what’s new, but appleinsider gives you the background and history of what led to this change or feature. It’s really pretty nifty.

Here are a few favorites about:
The Doc
Virtual Desktops (Spaces)
The Mail application
TimeMachine (backup up utility)

Good to know what to look forward to, and how it came to be.

A different history of computers and Linux

Wow, two posts in a day…

I just skimmed through this interview with Con Kolivas a major Linux kernel developer who has quite the Linux development world in frustration. What caught my attention was his ‘history’ of computers. His recollection of the computers history is truly different than I had ever learned or thought of. Basically, he paints the picture that computers could have been extremely different if the hardware had ruled instead of software. While computers were in their nascent state, the hardware being developed was ever changing. New and different ideas were used in each computer company. Then a software operating system came out that changed all that. By becoming the default OS, there was no more need to create better, different, new hardware. Instead all of the hardware was built and developed to suit the software.

It makes one think, what would computers be like if hardware ruled? What would they look like, how would they perform, how would they work, if they were not limited to one operating system?

Timeplot and Exhibit

The folks over at MIT’s SIMILE have two new projects that are just mindbogglingly awesome. I used the Timeline Project for my research project a few semesters ago about World War II.

Now they have a new time line type tool called Timeplot. This project uses a plot graph to display numerical data along with historical events. Sort of a mix between numbers and dates. Analytic history, if you will. I love the simplicity of the look, the ease of use, and the way it merges cold, dead data with live historical events. I have always wondered what historical events were happening at the time when I see graphs of data. This is an awesome tool to allow that to happen.

The other project, Exhibit, is a digital historians dream. Do you have lots of spreadsheets of info, perhaps all your dissertation data stored in the old JSON file? Wondering how to show that on the web without creating an extensive database solution? Exhibit takes care of it for you. And it’s dynamic! Sort and search the data automatically included. Crazy goodness! Now I just have to think of where to use this too….

The history of a software application

While doing some work today I stumbled upon a bit of history. The author calls it a story, but that’s what history is, right?

Anyhow, it’s a very entertaining and enthralling look at the birth and death (or retirement) of a software program. It provides a lot of insight into the process of making an application, building a software company, and some intriguing behind the scenes information about the coming forth of major Apple products like iTunes, iPhoto and the iPod.

Read “The True Story of Audion” the application that could have been iTunes. Link: http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

I'm alive… really, I am…

Not that anyone reads this with any regularity (made impossible by my irregular postings)….

I stumbled upon this cool video explaining “Web 2.0” from http://www.metagrrrl.com/ (I hate buzz words, and Web 2.0 is a huge bloated, overused, ugly buzz word. Oh well..)
Anyhow, it’s really cool…

(If it doesn’t show up, here’s the link.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE