computer science

A 1953 US Navy training film explaining the basic mechanisms in mechanical fire control computers aboard ships. It shows how gears, differentials and cams solved mathematical problems in permanent mechanical form.

CuriousMarc's Apollo Guidance Computer restoration series looks at core rope memory, the ROM that held the Moon landing programs. Mike Stewart builds a custom reader to recover lost AGC programs.

A 1969 BBC Tomorrow's World segment about Nellie, a school computer used by pupils at Forest Grammar School to solve equations and play music. Students learn programming and maintenance, and act out binary arithmetic.

A 1995 episode of The Computer Chronicles devoted to Gary Kildall, creator of CP/M. It works as a retrospective and tribute to the personal computer pioneer.

A 1987 episode of The Computer Chronicles on Apple's HyperCard, showing users building their own applications. Gary Kildall appears and Bill Atkinson discusses the program, with credit given to earlier influences.

A 1993 episode of The Computer Chronicles on the early Internet, with guests including Howard Rheingold discussing online community. It is a window into how the internet was seen and what hardware was in use at the time.

The first episode of the BBC's 1982 television series The Computer Programme, introducing home computing to a general audience. It surveys mainframes, early personal computers such as the BBC Micro and Commodore PET, and the changing computer market of the time.

The first episode of CuriousMarc's series restoring a real Apollo Guidance Computer, led by AGC expert Mike Stewart. They set up a makeshift lab in a Houston hotel room to open up a rare machine owned by a private collector.

A WGBH/NOVA re-enactment of Clifford Stoll's hunt for KGB-linked hacker Markus Hess, based on his book The Cuckoo's Egg. It starts from a 75-cent accounting discrepancy at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

A 57-minute account of Clifford Stoll's tracking of a KGB-linked hacker through Lawrence Berkeley Lab computers in 1986, the story of The Cuckoo's Egg. It covers the FBI and Chaos Computer Club involvement.

The 1990 NOVA documentary follows astronomer Clifford Stoll as he tracks a hacker through military and research computer networks, a story that involved the CIA and KGB. It is based on The Cuckoo's Egg.

A NOVA documentary with neuroscientist Heather Berlin exploring the subconscious and what drives our decisions. It uses sleepwalking, anesthesia, improvised rap in an MRI and game theory to probe how much of the brain's work is hidden.

The Computer History Museum's 25th anniversary celebration of the Commodore 64, recorded in December 2007, with a panel including Jack Tramiel and Steve Wozniak. It recounts the machine's launch and history.

A three-minute Computer History Museum clip showing Ernst Dickmanns' VaMoRs Mercedes van and later VaMP sedan, early self-driving vehicles tested from 1986 to 2003.

A 2001 VPRO Noorderlicht documentary episode, filmed in Austin in 2000, visiting Edsger Dijkstra and his views on thinking as a discipline. It is in Dutch with English subtitles.

The first episode of Clickspring's series on reproducing the Antikythera Mechanism by hand, laying out the plan and the history. The series follows a machinist building the ancient Greek device with traditional tools and methods.

A 1982 AT&T Bell Labs film for students about the Unix system and how it can be used practically. It includes Lorinda Cherry building a talking calculator by piping together Unix commands, and a spell checker made from Unix utilities.

A long Gamers Nexus investigation into how volatile US tariffs affect the computer hardware industry. It interviews manufacturers and sellers about costs, margins and why moving production to the US is hard.

A documentary on Clive Wearing, a renowned musician whose brain was damaged by a virus in 1985, leaving him with a memory spanning only about seven seconds. It follows his life and condition.

A VICE documentary profiling Wim Hof, the Iceman, covering his feats of cold endurance, his breathing and meditation method, and scientific studies of his control over his autonomic and immune systems.

Part one of Look Mum No Computer's series on buying a whole church pipe organ, covering how it was removed from its home. The series goes on to restoring it and rewiring it for MIDI.

Moleman 2 is a feature-length documentary about the demoscene, tracing its rise from 1980s Commodore 64 culture to modern real-time art. It explains the algorithms and creative process behind demos and intros.

The first episode of Jason Scott's eight-part BBS documentary, covering the predecessors and beginnings of the dial-up bulletin board system. It includes interviews with pioneers such as Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who created the first dial-up BBS in 1978.

A short vintage film clip of Seymour Papert, creator of Logo, on using computers to spark children's imagination and learning.

Atrocity Guide covers the 1965 dolphin experiments of Dr. John C. Lilly and Margaret Howe, who tried to teach dolphins English. It traces the bizarre methods and Lilly's later drug-fueled beliefs.

Jason Scott's multi-episode documentary on the bulletin board system scene of the 1980s and 1990s, built from over 200 interviews. It captures how hobbyists ran dial-up systems before the internet went mainstream.

A three-minute clip about Ernst Dickmanns' VaMoR and VaMP projects, in which fully autonomous vehicles drove thousands of miles on public roads in the 1980s. It is a brief look at early German self-driving research.

Micro Men is a 2009 BBC comic drama about the early 1980s British home computer boom. It follows the rivalry between Clive Sinclair and Acorn founder Chris Curry over the BBC Micro contract and the ZX Spectrum.

The first episode of James Burke's 1978 BBC series Connections traces modern dependence on complex technological networks, starting with the 1965 New York blackout, and moves through ancient agriculture to Kuwait's oil-driven leap.

Episode 4 of James Burke's Connections series, tracing how commercialism, climate change and the Black Death shaped the move to the Renaissance. It follows threads through waterpower, the printing press, the Jacquard loom and the Hollerith punch card toward modern computing.

A documentary on the last day the New York Times was printed with linotype machines in 1978, following the process from the newsroom to the press. It marks the move to computerized typesetting.

A 2007 Channel 4 documentary by Martin Durkin arguing that human-caused global warming is overstated or a scam. It features contrarian scientists such as Richard Lindzen and promotes sunspot and cosmic-ray explanations for temperature change. Its claims are rejected by mainstream climate science.

Jason Scott discusses making his documentary GET LAMP at a Google Tech Talk and screens part of the film. It covers the history of text adventures and interactive fiction, with interviews of Infocom developers and others.

Captain Disillusion's VFXcool episode, led by Alan Melikdjanian, takes a 41-minute nostalgic look at how the visual effects of Flight of the Navigator were made. It covers early computers, motion control, in-camera effects and practical crafts.

A 1973 AT&T training film made for new employees at Bell Labs' Holmdel Computing Center, when Unix was in its third version and running at 16 computer centers in the Bell System. It shows how users submitted jobs and used the center's machines.

A 1978 documentary hosted by Leonard Nimoy about the coming ice age, reposted with a framing that contrasts it with today's climate science.