#Technology History

[dinosaurspen]

TXE1 telephone exchange test console

[unbfacts]

Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder, didn’t contribute to programming or hardware design. Steve Wozniak, the technical mind behind Apple’s early products, and other employees recognized Wozniak as the inventor and Jobs as the marketing strategist.

[postmodern-speakeasy]

Soviet era Sphinx (СФИНКС), an experimental home automation system commissioned by the GNKT (State Committee for Science and Technology) and designed by Dmitry Azrikan in 1987. The Sphinx was a proto-laptop meant to allow consumers to easily interact with information systems

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Very rare Krastin automobile designed and manufactured by Augusts Krastins, USA, 1903. Riga Motor Museum, June 25, 2025. Photo by D.P.

[x-heesy]

Couple riding battery-powered scooters, 1918

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Memories by Waldeck 🎧

[indelibleevidence]

Brace yourself - I'm going to make an 'old person' post. 😁

When I was a toddler, back in the mists of time (a.k.a. the mid-to-late '80s), my dad was a TV technichian. Part of his job was to deliver people's new TVs, sit in their living room, hook them up to the power, then tune in the channels for them.

What this involved was getting your TV guide magazine, then sitting in front of the TV and doing a weird kind of manual search through the static, like tuning in a radio with a dial, but you needed a clear sound AND picture. None of the channels were visually labelled, so you had to get a good reception, then try to figure out what channel it was based on what your TV guide said was airing at the time. And then you'd allocate the signal you were receiving to correspond to one of the numbered buttons on your remote, so you could just skip straight there with one button press next time.

Luckily, the UK only had 4 channels at the time (it went up to 5 in the early 90s, and that was a Big Deal because we got a whole new soap opera), so it would only take about 15 minutes to figure out. This was pre-satellite/cable channels, so your choice of what to watch was very limited. And you could do it yourself - you didn't need a technician - but it could be a bit of a chore, and it was a service the store offered, so people paid for it.

I have no idea where I was going with this post (something, something, 'wow, technology really has evolved!') but there you go. That's the work that put food in my mouth as a kid.

[cmdrjanus-2]

Konrad Zuse: German inventor and computer pioneer

[makereadgrow]

We wouldn't have tech without textiles

So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:

1) Binary files are 1s and 0s

2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches

You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…

You can knit Doom.

However, after crunching some more numbers:

The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…

3322 square feet

Factoring it out…302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.

[techsnostalgia]

Remember choosing sides? Betamax vs Vhs? Sega or Nintendo? Maybe you fiercely defended the elegance of Mac OS against the ubiquity of Windows, or later, the crisp potential of HD DVD against the eventual Blu-ray behemoth. Technology history isn't just a linear progression; it's often forged in the crucible of intense competition. These battles – fierce, expensive, and often resulting in one side fading into obscurity – weren't just corporate squabbles.

[dinosaurspen]

MANIAC I with operators, 1952. Note the horseshoe on the right pillar, hung for good luck.

[prokopetz]

I was exactly the right age at exactly the right transitional period in history to have been an unsupervised preteen on dial-up BBSes, Usenet, IRC, and first-generation web forums, more or less in that order, so all things considered I think I'm doing pretty well.

[fabulaturbatory]

“past is prologue” 1967 program cover of the association for computing machinery (via university of minnesota archives)

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Hybrid-weapon system: US-supplied flatbed HMMWV in Ukrainian service, modified to carry a RAK-SA-12 12 tube 128mm rocket launcher, Ukraine, January 11, 2025. Source: OSINTtechnical

Ukrainian crews reportedly use the lighter systems to perform quick shoot-and-scoot fire missions.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

P.S. The West made a huge mistake when FIAT sold car factory technology and the same car design to the Soviet Union in 1960s...

Despite the Cold War, "Western" big business and corrupt politicians quite often saved Russia's backward industry and political system from collapse. Communist Russia was a hopelessly backward country, but in fact "the West" saved the communists by regularly leaking critical technologies into their hands, or did not prevent the KGB from stealing the West's technological "secrets"...

History repeats itself, in fact, even in modern war conditions, the currently collapsing West (USA) saves the Russian imperialist economy and war machine...

SEAT 124, 1968. The Spanish version of Fiat's family saloon was a big seller that helped to mobilise the Spanish middle class in the late 60s into the 70s. It remained on sale in Spain until 1980

[ronk]

The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera Mechanism has captured the imagination of archaeologists, mathematicians, and scientists

A hundred and twenty years ago, divers discovered a shipwreck off the island of Antikythera in Greece. What they found changed our understanding of human history. The mysterious Antikythera Mechanism has captured the imagination of archaeologists, mathematicians, and scientists ever since. It even inspired the plot for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny! Using the latest 3D x-ray and…