59 years ago today, the first computer program written in #BASIC was run.
The easy-to-learn and -use #programming language revolutionized #computing. A decade later, #BillGates would co-found #Microsoft to develop and sell the BASIC interpreter for the #Altair 8800, the first commercially successful desktop microcomputer.
🌊 The Land Before Linux: The Unix desktops
— The Register
"You could argue that macOS, based on the multi-threaded, multi-processing microkernel operating system Mach, BSD Unix, and the open source Darwin, is the most successful of all Unix operating systems."
Wow I forgot I had ordered this! Two volumes (plus extras) of Shift Happens including slip case. Having just flipped through this book already makes me unreasonably happy! #keyboards#ComputingHistory#ShiftHappens
Celebrating a computing pioneer! Happy Birthday to the Harvard Mark I which is 78 years old!
Also called #IBM ASCC, it was a colossal 51-ft long, 9,445-pound machine. Despite trigonometry taking over one minute, it broke new ground by using punched paper tape for data storage.
Retired in '59, it remains a cornerstone in computing history as it played a crucial role in the war effort during the latter part of World War II.
Does anyone have favorite stories of scaling popular web services ca. the late 90's / early 00's they could link to? (e.g., bradfitz's livejournal scaling story 1!)
How about some more Norwegian good stuff? NUSSE, Norway’s first electronic universal computer from 1951. It totally wasn’t a copy of Apexc, uh uh, nope. Check out the valves! #computingHistory
🌐 30 years of the web down under: how Australians made the early internet their own
➥ @theconversationau
「 In late 1992, the first Australian web server was installed. The Bioinformatics Hypermedia Server was set up by David Green at the Australian National University in Canberra, who launched his LIFE website that October. LIFE later claimed to be “Australia’s first information service on the World Wide Web” 」
Microsoft was unable to launch the product until 1985, however. Some people criticized the announcement as vaporware marketing against rivals.
One of those rivals was a PC-based GUI called Visi On which you can actually run in emulation today or view its interface: http://toastytech.com/guis/vision.html
A good book and accompanying DVD is Designing Interactions / Bill Moggridge. They covers some of the earlier days of computing. On them it shows a few other Xerox mouse designs that are totally different from what is used today. Also shows the first laptop. The book and DVD also cover up-to mid-2000s interviews looking back. Also has more than one interview / perspectives more than one for the mouse and palm pilot.
I had absolutely no idea that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward did advertisements for Prime Computer in the #1980s! Also, I have never, ever heard of Prime Computer. What's even more astounding is that they were based in my home state of Massachusetts! Why have I never heard of them?
It makes sense that Doctor Who would be a "hot property" in Massachusetts at that time. #WGBH in #Boston aired the Baker years frequently.
"Nicklaus Wirth felt that something more suitable to operating systems and application development was needed so he began work on Modula. This became Modula-2 and would be essentially finalized around 1984 or so."
📰 CP/M: An Unsung Architect of Micro-Computing
ᐅ @itsfoss
「 The era of CP/M, in my opinion, represents the beginnings of microcomputer history. It was a time of rapid innovation, community building, and exploration as enthusiasts, developers, and entrepreneurs were beginning to shape what would become our current, modern digital world 」