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The History of the Tab
How many college students today ever flip through trays of library catalogue cards? Some of them may never have used an actual tabbed file. But the tab as an information technology metaphor is everywhere in use. And whether our tabs … Continue reading
Posted in culture, design, history
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The Wizard in the Space Station: A Look Back at the Works of the Late Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Great retrospective looking back at Clarke’s most influential works. But relatively little space has been devoted to Clarke’s writing—the notable exception being the essays of his collaborator and friend, Gregory Benford, an astrophysicist and author of many science fiction novels … Continue reading
Monument created for Laika the space dog
A nice memorial for the first dog in space. Stories about how she was selected varied: Some said Laika was chosen for her good looks — a Soviet space pioneer had to be photogenic. Others indicated the top choice for … Continue reading
Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?
Wired has a fascinating story about two AI researchers, both of whom committed suicide. In 1991, Singh went to MIT to study artificial intelligence with his idol and soon attracted notice for his passion and mental stamina. Word was that … Continue reading
Posted in computers, history, robotics
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Famous Uncracked Codes
Check out this list of codes that are still unsolved. No doubt anyone who breaks one of these will ensure a place in history. Kryptos is a sculpture by American artist James Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central … Continue reading
Posted in cryptography, history
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The Origin of Everyday Punctuation Marks
Read this article on Neatorama to find out how some of our punctuation symbols came to be. Question Mark Origin: When early scholars wrote in Latin, they would place the word questio – meaning “question” – at the end of … Continue reading
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Images That Changed The World
A collection of the most powerful photos ever taken. Some people might be offended or upset by these images but this isn’t my intentions I just want it to be thought provoking and enlightening, and for people to talk about … Continue reading
Posted in history, photography
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Book: Where Wizards Stay Up Late
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon Touchstone, 1998 In Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Hafner and Lyon take us all the way back to the earliest days of computer networking. … Continue reading
Posted in books, computers, culture, history, networking, technology
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Book: The Computer: An Illustrated History
The Computer: An Illustrated History Mark Frauenfelder Carlton Books, 2005 This is computer pr0n at its finest. This large, beautiful coffee-table book chronicles the evolution of the computer through hundreds of photographs. Following the earliest counting devices, hulking mainframes, personal … Continue reading
The Development of the C Language
If you are curious how the C language came to be, read this paper by Dennis Ritchie himself. The C programming language was devised in the early 1970s as a system implementation language for the nascent Unix operating system. Derived … Continue reading
Posted in history, programming
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John Frum and the Cargo Cults
A Damn Interesting article that explains where the term “cargo cult” came from. One day in the early 1940s, the relatively isolated group of islands was descended upon by hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who arrived by sea and … Continue reading
Posted in culture, history, language
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The Story of Sergey Brin
Here’s a thoroughly engaging profile of Google cofounder Sergey Brin. The co-presidents share management duties with Eric Schmidt, a seasoned software executive whom they hired as chief executive officer in 2001 to oversee the day-to-day aspects of Google’s business—in short, … Continue reading
Posted in history, web
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The Agony of Atomic Genius
This is an interesting biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head physicist on the Manhattan Project. Note that this is quite a long article. The career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who headed the Manhattan Project, draws such questions … Continue reading
Posted in history, science/nature
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The Rise and Fall of William J. Sidis
A Damn Interesting article on the life a child prodigy. He sidestepped imprisonment thanks to his parents’ influence, but they confined him to their summer home in California for a year after the event. Embittered, William moved back to the … Continue reading
Posted in history, science/nature
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Rapatronic Nuclear Photographs
An article on how some early, extremely high-speed photographs were taken. During the early days of atomic bomb experiments in the 1940s, nuclear weapons scientists had some difficulty studying the growth of nuclear fireballs in test detonations. These fireballs expanded … Continue reading
Posted in history, photography, science/nature, technology
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Enigma simulator in Flash
This site has a really nice Flash implementation of the German Enigma cipher machine. It does a great job of illustrating conceptually how the internal mechanism worked. Link (via Digg)
Posted in cryptography, history, technology
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The Semicolon Wars
American Scientist has published an overview of programming languages, and offers some explanation on their prodigious growth in numbers. A catalog maintained by Bill Kinnersley of the University of Kansas lists about 2,500 programming languages. Another survey, compiled by Diarmuid … Continue reading
Posted in history, programming
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Have @it: A history of the @ sign
Nice short article from HP on the history of the @ sign. Link (via Digg) See this Wikipedia entry for more.
Posted in computers, history
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