COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 15 — SPACE SHUTTLE, EXCALIBUR, PINBALL CONSTRUCTION SET, AND DR. J VS. LARRY BIRD
Even if you’re only a casual gamer, there are probably a few video game designers whose names you’re familiar with, such as Sid Meier, Todd Howard, and Shigeru Miyamoto.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 14 — EXPRESS EASYSCAN AND THE SALES EDGE
In a bit of eerie foreshadowing, this episode of The Computer Chronicles from January 1984 opened with a discussion of a global pandemic.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 13 — THE IBM PROFS (AND THE MACINTOSH)
The episode I’m covering today was taped on January 18, 1984, four days before Super Bowl XVIII.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 12 — THE XEROX COLOR LASER PRINTER
Today’s episode contains what Stewart Cheifet would later describe as one of the classic “near disasters” involving a product demonstration on The Computer Chronicles.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 11 — THE AM2901C AND AM29116
Computer architecture is usually described in terms of bits. For instance, we often speak of early personal computers from the late 1970s and early 1980s as 8-bit machines.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 10 — THE SYTEK LOCALNET
Today, we think of networking as synonymous with the Internet–a global interconnected network that encompasses not just computers but also millions of “smart” devices.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 9 — THE VOTAN V5000 AND THE SPEECH PLUS CALLTEXT
This next episode of The Computer Chronicles from early 1984 examined the status of speech synthesis technology.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 8 — THE HERO-1 AND THE TEACHMOVER
In a recent essay for the socialist journal Current Affairs, Matthew James Seidel recounted a story from 2013 where “delivery drivers came up with an unexpected way to prevent robots from taking their jobs.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 7 — DONN B. PARKER AND THE DIGI-LINK
Roger Ebert wrote in his four-star review of the 1983 film WarGames, “Computers only do what they are programmed to do, and they will follow their programs to illogical conclusions.
COMPUTER CHRONICLES REVISITED, PART 6 — WORDVISION, WORD PLUS, AND THE WRITER'S WORKBENCH
Since the 1990s, word processing has largely been synonymous with Microsoft Word.