Behind the scenes at the NeXT Computer office(exhibits.stanford.edu)
188 points by Austin_Conlon | 102 comments
Stanford Libraries exhibit gallery of Doug Menuez photographs documenting daily life inside NeXT Computer, Inc.
#computing-history on Hacker News
50 stories tagged computing-history, newest first.
LISP Comes of Age (1980)(microship.com)
65 points by so-cal-schemer | 17 comments
An unpublished 1980 article by Steven K. Roberts written for Byte about the first LISP conference and AAAI conference at Stanford, with a retrospective introduction.
A story of a Figma bug that wasn't a bug at all (2021)(aresluna.org)
60 points by jllyhill | 5 comments
Marcin Wichary's archived 2021 Twitter thread explaining how a Figma Shift+numpad bug on Windows traces back to IBM PC keyboard Num Lock design decisions.
Cecilia Berdichevsky, Clementina expert (1961)(en.wikipedia.org)
31 points by fedecaccia | 2 comments
Wikipedia biography of Cecilia Berdichevsky, an Argentine computer scientist who programmed the Ferranti Mercury computer "Clementina" from 1961.
William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace(colo.to)
266 points by Eric_Gullichsen | 120 comments
Essay by Eric Gullichsen recounting the history of attempts to trademark the term "cyberspace" and William Gibson's connection to it.
The Genealogy of Eliza(elizagen.org)
25 points by abrax3141 | 2 comments
ELIZAGen project page reporting on a code-phylogeny effort that builds a family tree of ELIZA implementations by comparing architectural features with phylogenetic tools.
Margaret Hamilton has died(news.mit.edu)
2038 points by muglug | 236 comments
MIT News obituary reporting the death at 90 of Margaret Hamilton, the computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program.
La Cueva BBS in Mexico in 1993 (session replay)(nanochess.org)
61 points by nanochess | 22 comments
Óscar Toledo G.'s blog post replaying a 1993 terminal session on La Cueva de Atari BBS, a dial-up bulletin board in Mexico.
ENIAC Programmers (2011)(columbia.edu)
13 points by adunk | 1 comments
Columbia University Computing History page by Frank da Cruz about the ENIAC and the women who programmed it by plugging cables and setting switches.
Programming the ENIAC (2011)(columbia.edu)
9 points by nill0 | 0 comments
A Columbia University Computing History page by Frank da Cruz on the ENIAC and how its women programmers set it up by plugging cables and flipping switches.
The Ethernet spec was first drafted on this day in 1980(tomshardware.com)
7 points by Brajeshwar | 1 comments
Tom's Hardware news article marking the anniversary of the 1980 Ethernet specification drafted by DEC, Intel, and Xerox.
A brief history of the Bloomberg terminal(spectrum.ieee.org)
363 points by rbanffy | 153 comments
An IEEE Spectrum history-of-technology article by Allison Marsh on the origins and development of the Bloomberg Terminal used by Wall Street traders.
![Screenshot of tomandmaria.com: Los Alamos bets on ENIAC: Nuclear Monte Carlo simulations, 1947–1948 (2014) [pdf]](https://hn.urlbox.com/shots/renders/2026/10/1/b4d72e53-57fb-489e-98ff-90821d31e684.jpg)
Los Alamos bets on ENIAC: Nuclear Monte Carlo simulations, 1947–1948 (2014) [pdf](tomandmaria.com)
48 points by nill0 | 1 comments
A 2014 IEEE Annals of the History of Computing paper by Haigh, Priestley and Rope reconstructing the 1948 ENIAC Monte Carlo nuclear simulations run for Los Alamos.
Alan Kay's answer to “Did the ENIAC have a BIOS”?(quora.com)
176 points by midnightfish | 61 comments
A Quora answer by Alan Kay to the question of whether the ENIAC computer had a BIOS; the capture shows a Cloudflare verification page.
Show HN: Museum of Numbers(numbermuseum.com)
23 points by rhl314 | 9 comments
A Museum of Numbers exhibit page about 2,147,483,647, the maximum 32-bit signed integer, opening with the Gangnam Style YouTube view counter overflow story.
C's Flexible Integer Sizes Were Not a Design Mistake(pikuma.com)
75 points by ibobev | 117 comments
Pikuma blog post by Gustavo Pezzi arguing C's flexible integer sizes enabled portability across 12, 18, 36, and 60-bit machines rather than being a design mistake.
RAM: the forgotten history (2024)(blog.coredump.cx)
101 points by Luc | 5 comments
A Substack essay by lcamtuf arguing that modern computers owe more to the invention of electronically controlled working memory than to Charles Babbage.
What Sun got wrong(bcantrill.dtrace.org)
660 points by chmaynard | 380 comments
Bryan Cantrill blog post reflecting on what Sun Microsystems got wrong, prompted by Oxide's homage t-shirts for its OxCon meetup.
CIA funding helped keep NeXT afloat in the 80s(wsj.com)
429 points by EwanG | 257 comments
Wall Street Journal article reporting that CIA funding helped keep Steve Jobs's company NeXT afloat in the 1980s; the capture shows a captcha verification page.
Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”(arstechnica.com)
501 points by DamnInteresting | 184 comments
Ars Technica article on Microsoft open-sourcing the earliest known DOS source code, from 86-DOS before Microsoft acquired it.
I’ve built a virtual museum with nearly every operating system you can think of(virtualosmuseum.org)
912 points by andreww591 | 201 comments
The Virtual OS Museum is a Linux VM for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM bundling 1,700+ pre-installed historical and modern operating systems running under emulation.
Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)(sceneandheardnu.com)
629 points by walterbell | 334 comments
A 2021 blog article by Sarah Aie arguing that the AMC series Halt and Catch Fire is TV's best drama that few people have heard of.
Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)(anders.unix.se)
439 points by turrini | 217 comments
Blog post comparing desktop screenshots from well-known Unix developers like Brian Kernighan taken in 2002 and again in 2015.
Mr TIFF(inventingthefuture.ghost.io)
962 points by speckx | 129 comments
A blog post on Inventing The Future about the history of the TIFF image file format and the person behind its creation.
Show HN: A zoomable, searchable archive of BYTE magazine(byte.tsundoku.io)
356 points by chromy | 61 comments
A zoomable, regex-searchable visual archive displaying all ~100k pages of BYTE computer magazine in a single view.
Bill Atkinson's psychedelic user interface(patternproject.substack.com)
450 points by cainxinth | 269 comments
A Substack essay from The Pattern Project on how Apple engineer Bill Atkinson approached psychedelic experience as a user-experience problem.
Joining Apple Computer (2018)(folklore.org)
425 points by tosh | 117 comments
Bill Atkinson's Folklore.org reflection on the 40th anniversary of joining Apple Computer in 1978, recounting how he left his neuroscience PhD to work there.
Microsoft’s original source code(gatesnotes.com)
550 points by EvgeniyZh | 289 comments
Bill Gates's GatesNotes post presenting Microsoft's original source code (Altair BASIC), styled with ASCII art on a printout-like page.
The earliest versions of the first C compiler known to exist(github.com)
351 points by diginova | 161 comments
GitHub repository containing source code of the earliest known versions of Dennis Ritchie's first C compiler (last1120c and prestruct).
The early days of Linux (2023)(lwn.net)
422 points by stmw | 125 comments
LWN article by Lars Wirzenius recalling his memories of the earliest days of Linux, its creation by Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki, and its early growth.
1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected(tuhs.org)
407 points by henry_flower | 125 comments
A TUHS mailing list post describing the recovery of a working 1972 UNIX V2 "beta" system from Dennis Ritchie's s1/s2 DECtapes.
"A computer can never be held accountable"(simonwillison.net)
380 points by zdw | 253 comments
Simon Willison blog post sharing a 1979 IBM training page stating a computer can never be held accountable and so must never make a management decision.
Tell HN: John Friel my father, internet pioneer and creator of QModem, has died
988 points by AaronFriel | 87 comments
A Hacker News post by Aaron Friel announcing the death of his father John Friel, creator of QModem, inviting people to share memories.
What did Ada Lovelace's program actually do? (2018)(twobithistory.org)
338 points by mitchbob | 116 comments
A Two-Bit History blog post from 2018 explaining what Ada Lovelace's Note G program for Babbage's Analytical Engine computed and how it worked.
COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it(wumpus-cave.net)
402 points by hardburn | 388 comments
A Wumpus Cave blog post by Timm Murray about how COBOL has long been declared dead, citing an old article his grandfather wrote on the topic.
NSA releases 1982 Grace Hopper lecture(nsa.gov)
840 points by gaws | 195 comments
NSA historical release page for Capt. Grace Hopper's 1982 lecture "Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People," published via its FOIA declassification program.
![Screenshot of youtube.com: Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers (1953) [video]](https://hn.urlbox.com/shots/renders/2024/8/20/de2fde40-cf38-400e-ab48-e247740b5cd6.jpg)
Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers (1953) [video](youtube.com)
337 points by teqsun | 113 comments
YouTube video of a 1953 U.S. Navy instructional film explaining the basic mechanisms used in mechanical fire control computers, posted by PeriscopeFilm.
The Origins of DS_store (2006)(arno.org)
512 points by edavis | 251 comments
A blog post by the former Mac OS X Finder technical lead explaining where the name and purpose of .DS_Store files came from.
Round Rects Are Everywhere(folklore.org)
396 points by zerojames | 168 comments
Andy Hertzfeld's Folklore.org story about Steve Jobs convincing Bill Atkinson to add rounded rectangles to QuickDraw on the original Macintosh in 1981.
Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home(every.to)
455 points by adrianhon | 103 comments
An Every article from The Crazy Ones series telling the story of Lore Harp McGovern, who built the microcomputer company Vector Graphic from her suburban home.
John Walker, founder of Autodesk, has died(scanalyst.fourmilab.ch)
1015 points by jdougan | 204 comments
Obituary forum post on Scanalyst announcing the death of John Walker, Autodesk founder and Fourmilab creator, on February 2, 2024, with a biography.
Why is the mouse cursor slightly tilted and not straight?(ux.stackexchange.com)
414 points by wscourge | 271 comments
A User Experience Stack Exchange question asking why the mouse pointer cursor is tilted rather than straight, and whether it is a legacy design choice.
John Lasseter drew the BSD daemon logo(jacobelder.com)
390 points by jelder | 86 comments
Blog post by Jacob Elder noting that Toy Story director John Lasseter drew the BSD Daemon logo, illustrated with vintage Unix manuals.
Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)(forrestheller.com)
453 points by raimue | 178 comments
A comparison table of the CPUs in modern USB-C wall chargers versus the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer, covering clock speed, RAM, storage, and instruction sets.
Cray-1 vs Raspberry Pi(roylongbottom.org.uk)
319 points by stare_spb | 164 comments
Roy Longbottom's page comparing Cray-1 supercomputer benchmark performance with home computers, phones, tablets and Raspberry Pi, plus his background in benchmarking.
Turbo Pascal Turns 40(blog.marcocantu.com)
400 points by andsoitis | 231 comments
Marco Cantù blog post marking the 40th anniversary of Borland's Turbo Pascal, introduced in November 1983 as an early popular IDE.
Ethernet Is Still Going Strong After 50 Years(spectrum.ieee.org)
365 points by pseudolus | 354 comments
IEEE Spectrum article on Ethernet's 50-year history and its status as the worldwide standard LAN technology, recognized as an IEEE Milestone.
Things Every Hacker Once Knew (2017)(catb.org)
327 points by prakhar897 | 172 comments
Eric S. Raymond's essay on obsolete computing lore once common among hackers, covering modems, RS232, octal, terminals, ASCII, and pre-Internet networks.
Brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release (1993)(wiki.debian.org)
323 points by ecliptik | 107 comments
Ian Murdock's original 1993 Usenet announcement of the Debian Linux Release, hosted as a text attachment on the Debian wiki.
Exploring the Internals of Linux v0.01(seiya.me)
458 points by ingve | 112 comments
A blog post walking through the source code and internals of Linux v0.01, the roughly 10,000-line first release of the Linux kernel.