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March 31, 2006
General Purpose Computers, from 1952
Modern Mechanix has a piece on a 1952 General Purpose Computer. Sporting 2K of memory, running at .12 MHz, with 360K storage tapes, this mean machine would run about $62,000 back in 1952 (and that's pretty close, based on currency exchange rates back then).
Posted by Shane Doucette at 04:08 PM
March 30, 2006
A Look at Inventing the Internet Age
The CBC has an interesting look at their coverage of the growth of the Internet in their archives. From coverage of ARPANET in 1970, through Telidon, and Peter Gzowski learning to surf the web, to the creation of CA*NET 3, this piece covers it all.
I found it very interesting that the Canadian public had very serious issues with the creation of a national computer network. In particular, many people had a belief that such a network would lead to "invasion of privacy, wasted tax dollars, unemployment and a mountain of useless information." Since many of these issue are still prevelent today, it seems that Canadians were very aware of the potential pitfalls of the technology.
(And really, isn't the internet pretty much a mountain of useless information, in any case?)
Posted by Shane Doucette at 01:26 PM
March 29, 2006
Windows 1.03 Installation Review
The year is 1985. Ronald Reagan has recently started his second term in office. Mikhail Gorbachev has come into power as leader of the Soviet Union. The first .com address was registered by Symbolics, Inc.. It's November 21st, and you're excited. You hold in your hands the 1.0 release of a little program called "Windows" from the software company Microsoft.
Fellow computer museum DigiBarn has an article on their recent acquisition of the 1.03 release of Windows, complete with pictures and commentary.
[via digg]
Posted by Shane Doucette at 09:13 AM
A Gallery of Graphical User Interfaces
The GUIdebook is a gallery of Graphical User Interfaces from the past and present. It's a categorized look at the interfaces of operating systems and applications of the past and present, with views of the GUIs and the timelines of their development, the GUI components, and even advertisments and articles.
Posted by Shane Doucette at 06:58 AM
March 27, 2006
Digitized Computer Advertisement Archive
Jason Scott of Textfiles fame has been busy digitizing his collection of ancient computer advertisements. It seems that he went and ordered justa bout every possible catalog from computer magazines that you could back in the 80s, and he wants to share it all with us now.
it's available at digitize.textfiles.com. If you're like me, you'll remember many of these from seeing them in magazines like Compute!'s Gazette and whatnot, or from having requested some of them yourself.
Posted by Shane Doucette at 10:44 AM
March 21, 2006
Bootable Operating Systems for Older Computers...
Get bootable operating systems for old computers at
Posted by Robert Grosse at 02:17 PM