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Photo of the three mounted voltmeters on a rack panel.

Build a Retro Timekeeper That Never Was

21 Jun

Frames from the comic. When interviewing job candidates, Olivetti’s Mario Tchou posed intellectually challenging questions.

Rediscovering the Remarkable Engineers Behind Olivetti’s ELEA 9003

17 Jun

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Photo-illustration of headshots of Charles Parsons, Katharine Parsons, and Rachel Parsons.

This British Family Changed the Course of Engineering

31 May

Photo-illustration of camera lens and running horse.

June 1878: Muybridge Photographs a Galloping Horse

23 May

Photograph of Elisabetta Mori at the console of the last working ELEA 9003 in Tuscany.

The Last Working Olivetti Mainframe Sits In a Tuscan High School

23 May

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Italy’s Olivetti Programma 101.

The Calculator That Helped Land Men on the Moon

21 May

illustration of Adriano Olivetti and Mario Tchou.

The Italian Computer: Olivetti’s ELEA 9003 Was a Study in Elegant, Ergonomic Design

21 May

Photograph of the IBM System 360.

Building the System/360 Mainframe Nearly Destroyed IBM

5 Apr

Illustration: Chris Malbon

How Programmable Calculators and a Sci-Fi Story Brought Soviet Teens Into the Digital Age

27 Sep 2018

Photo: IBM

Hans Peter Luhn and the Birth of the Hashing Algorithm

30 Jan 2018

Illustration by Jude Buffum

The Improbable Origins of PowerPoint

31 Oct 2017

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Belle was a winning chess-playing computer developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s.

In 1983, This Bell Labs Computer Was the First Machine to Become a Chess Master

26 Apr

Collage of Venky Harinarayan, Jezz Bezos, and the patent for a “hybrid machine/human computing arrangement”.

Untold History of AI: How Amazon’s Mechanical Turkers Got Squeezed Inside the Machine

22 Apr

Photo-illustration of the exterior of St. George’s Hospital Medical School with text relating to the case.

Untold History of AI: Algorithmic Bias Was Born in the 1980s

15 Apr

Photo-illustration showing JCR Licklider at a desk with text from his1960 paper entitled “Man-Machine Symbiosis” in the image.

Untold History of AI: The DARPA Dreamer Who Aimed for Cyborg Intelligence

8 Apr

Photograph of Alan Turing with the words Add 34957 to 70764, (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer), 105621.

Untold History of AI: Why Alan Turing Wanted AI Agents to Make Mistakes

1 Apr

In the 1970s, the CIA developed a tiny camera that turned homing pigeons into spies.

Consider the Pigeon, a Surprisingly Capable Technology

29 Mar

Photo of the replica ground-radar display.

The Imperial War Museum Replicates a WWII Bomber’s H2S Radar Display

28 Mar

Marlyn Wescoff and Ruth Lichterman were two of the female programmers of ENIAC.

Untold History of AI: Invisible Women Programmed America's First Electronic Computer

25 Mar

Collage illustration of The Turk, with a background of the Difference Engine, and Charles Babbage looking on.

Untold History of AI: When Charles Babbage Played Chess With the Original Mechanical Turk

18 Mar

Photo: Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images

This 1850s Medical Device Was Said to Cure Toothache, Gangrene, and Ennui

28 Feb

photo of pink princess phone

In 1959, AT&T Discovered There Was a Market for a Lady’s Phone

31 Jan

The Amiga computer.

Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame: The Gadgets You Loved Most

29 Jan

Schematic showing the complete details for the electronics in the SIGSALY converter reconstruction

SIGSALY Analog-to-Digital Converter Construction and Debugging

25 Jan

Photo: Jon D. Paul

Rebuilding a Piece of the First Digital Voice Scrambler

25 Jan

Photo: Mark Richards/Computer History Museum

Coded for Cuteness: How the Furby Conquered Hearts and Minds

2 Jan

Photo: Daniel Hannaby

Log On Like It’s 1985: A Fragment of Minitel Returns

18 Dec 2018

Paul Saffo (left), Erika Gregory, Ben Rattray, and Erika Woolsey discuss how Doug Englebart's approach of using technology to augment human capabilities can be used to address today's toughest problems.

“What Would Doug Engelbart Do?” Ask Organizers of a Silicon Valley Event

14 Dec 2018

Beatles pinball machine from Stern Pinball.

In Retail’s Shift to Online, The Winner is… Pinball?

4 Dec 2018

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