tech history

A feature-length documentary on General Magic, the 1989 startup that envisioned the smartphone and handheld connected devices, featuring Tony Fadell, Andy Hertzfeld and Marc Porat. It covers the company's vision and eventual failure.

Steve Blank's Computer History Museum lecture argues that Silicon Valley's roots lie in WWII radar and electronic warfare work, Stanford's Fred Terman and Cold War military funding rather than the semiconductor alone.

Steve Blank tells how World War II, Stanford's Frederick Terman and military and intelligence agencies shaped the rise of Silicon Valley. The talk centers on the Cold War electronic warfare and signals intelligence work that seeded the region's tech industry.

A Computer History Museum oral history panel with four 3dfx founders on the company's rise with Voodoo Graphics and Glide, and its fall into bankruptcy. It runs about two and a half hours.

Technology Connections gives a deeply researched history of RCA's CED video disc system, a capacitance-based format that took over a decade to reach market. Part one covers its development and strange technology.

A Computer History Museum oral history of Chuck Peddle, the engineer behind the 6502 and the Commodore PET, covering his career from GE through Motorola and MOS Technology. It runs nearly four hours.

The opening episode of Ted Nelson's Computers for Cynics series, in which he casts doubt on conventional accounts of computer basics. He argues that conventions and packaging are mistaken for technology.

In this American Masters clip, Jacques Pepin shows two different techniques for making a perfect omelet, a dish he is famous for teaching America.

The Verge's documentary on Handspring and its Treo, a smartphone that came a decade before the iPhone. It tells how a small team tried to build the modern smartphone and was held back by carriers and timing.

A Computer History Museum oral history with Avie Tevanian covering his math talent, work on the Mach microkernel at CMU, joining NeXT, leading NEXTSTEP development and the 1996 Apple acquisition.

A Computer History Museum oral history interview with Dave Cutler, covering his youth, early work on operating systems at DuPont and Digital Equipment, and his path toward VMS and Windows NT. This is part one of a long-form interview.

A 1997 Computer History Museum lecture in which Larry Tesler and Chris Espinosa recount how the Apple human interface was born, from the Lisa through the Macintosh. It covers design decisions such as discoverability and the standard editing keys.

A 2008 documentary by Brett Whitcomb about the Rock-afire Explosion, the animatronic band built for ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants. It follows the band's history and the fans who keep the machines and their technology running.

Dave Jaggar, who defined much of the ARM architecture, recounts how Acorn's near-extinction led to ARM, including the history of Thumb, StrongARM, and the Austin team.

Part two of a Computer History Museum oral history with Gary Davidian, covering his work on the 68000 emulator for PowerPC at Apple, Power Computing, clean-room contracting and later performance optimization work. It is nearly three hours long.

Grady Booch interviews John Backus, who led the IBM team that created FORTRAN in 1957, for the Computer History Museum in 2006. Backus describes the development of the first successful high-level language and its compiler. The interview runs 88 minutes.

A Computer History Museum oral history with Bill Mensch, designer of the 6502 and 65816, covering his path from a Pennsylvania farm through Motorola and later work.

A two-hour Computer History Museum oral history interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, conducted by Paul McJones in 2015. It covers his youth, education at Aarhus and Cambridge, his career at Bell Labs and elsewhere, and the design and evolution of C++.

Computer History Museum oral history of Steve Naroff, an engineer at Stepstone, NeXT and Apple who worked on Objective-C. This first session covers his childhood, music background and early career.

The first lecture of N J Wildberger's History of Mathematics course, starting with Pythagoras' theorem and following Stillwell's text. It emphasizes the flow of ideas over proofs.

The first episode of Crash Course World History, in which John Green covers the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture and how it shaped civilization. It is delivered fast and with jokes.

Neil Postman's 1997 lecture at College of DuPage, based on his book, argues that Americans treat technology as a national religion and depend on it to solve larger human problems. It includes audience questions.

A long documentary-style video arguing that slavery in the US effectively continued through convict leasing and the prison system until around 1942. It covers the constitutional carveout and the history of neoslavery.

First part of a four-part video history of Japan's electronics industry, covering the birth of the transistor and the rise of Japanese semiconductors. It appears to draw on NHK documentary material.

An ICFP 2015 keynote on the history of Standard ML, covering its ideas, principles and culture. It traces ML from Strachey, Landin and Milner through SML's development and its interplay with OCaml.

The earliest existing concert video of Kraftwerk, from a 1970 performance shortly after the band formed. It shows the band in its original setup and the audience's reactions.

Kirk McKusick gives a narrative history of the Berkeley Software Distributions at MeetBSD California. He covers how BSD originated and evolved, including the origin of the networking releases.

Bill Wurtz's fast, comedic and musical run through the whole history of Japan in nine minutes.

Rob Pike gives an insider's account of the history of Unix and the development of key pieces of modern computing, including Bell Labs anecdotes.

Adam Tornhill's GOTO Copenhagen 2019 talk on how to prioritize technical debt in large codebases. It argues for combining code complexity with change frequency (hotspots) from version control data, rather than trying to quantify debt in the abstract.

A song by Pig With The Face Of A Boy that narrates the history of the Soviet Union from a worker's view, set to the Tetris melody.

A Last Week Tonight segment on tech monopolies, their hidden harms and possible remedies such as antitrust reform. John Oliver covers lobbying and legislation along the way.

aGameScout explains rolling, the third major NES Tetris playstyle, in which players tap the back of the controller to move pieces faster than hypertapping. It covers how the technique works and where it comes from.

A short compilation of Steve Jobs giving his opinions on Microsoft, including calling it opportunistic and lacking taste. It also touches on the role of big tech companies in showing what is possible.

Veritasium tells the story of Thomas Midgley Jr., who introduced leaded gasoline and CFCs, and covers the science behind lead exposure and ozone damage. It also touches on isotope geochemistry used to uncover the history.

James Hoffmann demonstrates his technique for a clean, sludge-free cup from a French press: stir, break the crust, wait, and carefully pour. It is a four-minute guide.

AdoredTV's history of Intel's monopolistic behavior over three decades, covering its dealings with AMD and its anti-consumer practices.

A two-minute clip of Steve Ballmer laughing at the $500 price of the newly announced iPhone and dismissing its lack of a keyboard. It captures a famously wrong early reaction from an industry executive.

Karl Fogel's 2006 Google Tech Talk traces copyright from a 16th-century English censorship law to a distribution monopoly. It then surveys alternative economic bases for creation and distribution.

A Primitive Technology episode in which the creator builds a bow-drill-driven bark fan to blow air into a fire, using only natural materials. It shows the progression from fanning a fire by hand to a rotary forge blower.