DyalogMar 10
If you are in the Toronto, Canada, area on Thursday 12 March, why not spend the afternoon (15:45-17:30 EDT ) at a panel discussion on the history of academic computing in Canada? Hosted by York University, APL is likely to feature – their “York APL” implementation helped spread APL’s academic use in the 1970s. Reserve your place at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/computing-at-york-the-beginning-tickets-1983888703517 #Dyalog #APL #HistoryOfComputing
Computing at York: the Beginning

Exhibit features York computer artifacts, archival photos, and vintage hardware, highlighting early campus computing and its evolution.

Eventbrite
This Grandpa BlogsMar 5
How did PCs take over the world? Fire in the Valley breaks down the early battles, bold ideas, and big personalities behind Apple, Microsoft, and the tech revolution.
#BookTokTech #HistoryOfComputing #TechNerd #books
Show threadMichael RobertsFeb 3

A brief word of explanation - this is an old, old website, #historyofcomputing on the hoof, and a lot of stuff doesn't work. The last time I published to it was 2014, and even that was an attempt at revival after it had lain dormant since 2009. Some of it dates back to 1997 or so.

Everything pertinent to Jumbo works. Everything else is ... well. Don't bother notifying me of things that don't work, let's put it that way.

It's a miracle the blog works again, honestly.

Michael RobertsFeb 3

I'm halfway through a reimplementation of Douglas Hofstadter's 1982 program Jumbo, the first implementation of his parallel terraced scan, and I've written a bit about it.

Explanatory blog post at http://www.vivtek.com/blog/jum-sprint-done.html, and that links to a PDF paper, the code, and a few explanatory pages on the project. Feedback welcome! But I'll keep plugging away regardless. It's got its teeth into me now.

#hofstadter #ai #historyofcomputing

Jum sprint (November 8 - January 8)

Jeffrey YostJan 29

New Interfaces article by CBI Senior Research Fellow William Aspray & Union College Prof. Emeritus David Hemmendinger "Using Reference Works to Study the Intellectual and Cultural History of Computing." It reflects on their terrific new book pictured below. #HistoryOfComputing #computers #AI #computerscience #technology #science #history

Interfaces:
cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces

SiliciumJan 29

L'OKI IF-800 Model 50 de 1983 est fascinant :
un ordinateur conçu comme infrastructure de bureau, avec Kanji natif et approche “système”.
Il montre pourquoi le Japon, malgré sa maîtrise technique, a perdu la bataille des standards mondiaux.

A lire : https://www.silicium.org/index.php/blog-catalogue/divers/oki-if-800-model-50

#RetroComputing #HistoryOfComputing #JapaneseTech #OKI #IF800 #DigitalHistory

SiliciumJan 26

En 1986, Compaq sort le Deskpro 386, premier PC 32 bits du marché.
Moment clé : IBM perd le contrôle de l’évolution du PC.
Un vrai tournant pour l’écosystème ouvert.

#RetroComputing #HistoryOfComputing #PC #silicium #retrocomputing

Priyabrata PaulJan 12

📜 In the 1950s, Dr. Newell and Simon were developing the Logic Theory Machine to simulate human problem-solving. They faced a challenge: tracking an unpredictable number of logical statements. Early machines like ENIAC used fixed-size arrays, where the size had to be predefined.

🤔Want to know how they solved this, given those limitations?

👉 Read the full story here - "Story of The First Linked List" - https://priyabrata-paul-blog.hashnode.dev/story-of-the-first-linked-list

#HistoryOfComputing #DataStructures #LinkedList

Show threadJdeBPDec 21

@davefischer

Strictly speaking that's a conflation of two distinct strands of history that were a decade and a half apart.

AT&T #Unix System 5 Release 3 had the system of subdirectories and scriptlets, developed because /etc/rc had exploded into a mess when people came to realize that sysops installed third party softwares. This was superseded by something else, the SAF, in S5R4 in 1988. Unices with AT&T heritage such as #Illumos and #Tribblix have that still today, all these decades later.

Whereas what people erroneously call "System V init" was an init+rc system developed independently, for a different operating system with a separate lineage, cloning the design of the old AT&T Unix S5R3 system of roughly a decade before, by Miguel van Smoorenburg in the early to middle 1990s. *That* is the strand of history that went from Minix on to Linux, and was in some flavours succeeded by Upstart and then by systemd.

#HistoryOfComputing #retrocomputing #Upstart #ServiceAccessFacility

Hacker NewsDec 15

Frances Elizabeth Allen: The Woman Who Made Code Run Fast – and Was Forgotten

https://voxmeditantis.com/2025/12/13/frances-elizabeth-allen-the-woman-who-made-code-run-fast-and-was-forgotten-because-it-worked/

#HackerNews #FrancesAllen #Legacy #WomenInTech #CodeOptimization #ComputerScience #HistoryOfComputing

Frances Elizabeth Allen: The Woman Who Made Code Run Fast – And Was Forgotten Because It Worked

Frances Allen sits down to discuss how compiler optimisation became computing’s invisible foundation. From farm girl to Turing Award winner, she reveals why the most profound technical achiev…

Vox Meditantis