This collection of information is curated for spanitis by the author of "The Programmer's Odyssey" Garth Eaglesfield and covers a wide and varied range of historical computer technology topics. Please email garth@spanitis.com to recommend additional content for the collection.

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Programming

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• How Aristotle paved the way for computer logic (Atlantic monthly article)

• In 1843 Ada Lovelace became the first computer programmer (New Yorker article)

• Calculating Ada a BBC documentary on Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage

• How modern symbolic logic replaced Aristotelian logic

• Meet Admiral Grace Hopper, the mother (yes, mother!) of the COBOL programming language

• The CIS COBOL portable compiler technology clearly explained by Peter Brown

• An infogram summarising the history of programming

• Working as a programmer in the 1970s

• In 1951 Mary Coombs became the first female commercial programmer

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Software

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• The spreadsheet 'killer app' arrives

•   How PCs became programming engines in the 1990s

• The browser 'killer app' arrives  
• Linux ushers in the open source revolution

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Hardware, Networks, Videos

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• The history of computing devices since the stone age

• Storage technology from punched cards to the cloud

• UK home brew and US PCs make computing personal

• Dial up bulletin board systems (BBSs) in pre-Internet days

• When Ethernet and Token Ring LANs fought it out

• US and UK foundations of the Internet

• How 2-tier client/server was finally beaten

• The history of trackballs!

• Claude Shannon invented digital communications, read all about it

• A MUST see documentary about George Boole

• Great timeline of storage technology developments (identified by Krista Adams)

• USB standards before USB 4.0

• A good article on the cloud and data storage (identified by self confessed 'computer nerd' Katie from the Lyndhurst Stem Club for Girls)

• Here's a fine biography of Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine (as identified by Lily Casal, one of the young women now involving themselves in STEM) 

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Background

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• What If He Is Right? Tom Wolfe's legendary 1965 'new journalism' article about Marshal Mcluhan and the furore he was causing with his predictions about the social and cultural effects of technology

• The heyday of UK computing in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s

• UK women in computing

• What is Information? Professor Jim Al-Khalili thinks it's a basic component of the universe - like energy

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Computer Museums

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The links below will lead you to the major computer technology museum web sites in the UK and the US and in some cases to 3D views of their contents