The year is 1982 and Crazy Eddie (with prices so low he’s practically giving everything away) decides to hawk home computers like the Commodore VIC-20 and the Apple ][. Crazy Eddie was a retail chain that was started in Brooklyn in the early 70s and hit a high point in the 80s until the Feds shut them down for fraud charges. By the way the guy in the commercial isn’t the owner of the store who was busted — he’s Jerry Carroll who was an FM radio DJ at the time. Here is an example of his more creative work: Read more…
The history of tech is so ironic: Once upon a time in the early 90s Apple gave birth to the first real PDA — the Newton. I was at the first MacWorld in Boston when an army of eager developers got their hands on this gizmo, you could feel the magic in the air. In retrospect most people look at all of the flaws of the Newton (like a hand writing recognition) but people forget what a breakthrough it was at the time. Read more…
The Aérotrain sounds like a plot device from a steampunk novel — a rocket powered railroad car designed to travel on a monorail. This amazing retro tech project was lead by engineer Jean Bertin in France from 1965 until 1977. Sadly Bertin passed away in 1975, and his technology was passed over in favor of high speed trains that used high-powered electrical motors. Shown above is a working prototype from 1967 that was powered by Pratt & Whitney JT12 engine. Below is an early concept model which was created in 1962 which used compressed air: Read more…
For an entire decade you’ve given it your all — not just to turn around the company we love, but to make computing fun, sexy and exciting again. Read more…
Year-after-year I’ve watched the usual suspects make their tech predictions, so this year I’ve decided as a fanboy that it was my right to make a fool of myself as much as the next guy. Most people are in a doom and gloom mindset right now, but I’ve always felt that there are opportunities when the going gets tough. In fact my one ambivalent prediction is that somewhere in 2009/2010 someone will start a new company which will become the next big thing. But here’s what I think will be happening with the current cast of characters in the tech scene: Read more…
In my final year of art school (which was 1987) I had a friend from Japan who owned the Sharp X68000 — in fact the computer was only ever sold in Japan. As you can see in the commercial above this machine was very friendly for folks who liked to work with video and graphics, and that wasn’t by accident as the box was powered by a Motorola 68000 CPU which was the same family of chips that powered the other artist friendly machines of that era which were the Macintosh and the Amiga. The first model of this system ran at 10 MHz, had 1 meg of of RAM and no built in hard drive, so it’s sort of amazing just how much this system could do. It’s also interesting to note that many game designers in Japan created arcade games using the X68000 and today you can find emulators for the system. Read more…
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient calculator that was discovered in Greece over 100 years ago, what makes it amazing is that it’s over 2,000 years old and uses similar technology that wasn’t available until the 18th century. But what’s very cool is that scientists have recently reconstructed a working model of the mechanism which was used to calculate the positions of the sun, moon, and the planets: Read more…
In this video Lyle of the Mutoid Waste Company shows off his fire breathing Robo Dog creation to the public. The Mutoid crew dates back to the mid-80s when they started out as an arts collective that would hold huge parties that would feature all sorts of neat mega sized kit bashed creations — sort of like the Burning Man of England. Read more…
The one thing that I’ve noticed of late is that every yabbo software entrepreneur always cries foul at the slightest notion of the auto industry getting a government rescue. But the one thing these folks seem to forget is that there wouldn’t be a software industry if it weren’t for the very socialist roots of silicon valley. The valley didn’t happen by any sort of happy accident — it occurred because because of heavy investment by the defense industry in companies like HP going back to World War II. In fact even the internet itself wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) invented the damn thing. In the above video from the Computer History Museum entrepreneur Steve Blank gives a history of how the valley is the child of a welfare program recipient (which all in all is a very good thing for this county).
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 4, 2008 in Star Trek, Tech
So the other day I was going on how the USS Kelvin had just started following me on Twitter to promote their trivia contest for Star Trek XI (which is sponsored by Intel and Lenovo) and of course I had to lament that while the contest was cool and all — what was really needed was a Trek themed laptop. So it was with much pleasure today that I found out that not only is this the case, but the sweet folks at contest just sent me a sneak preview photo of the laptop itself. For now my guess is for now that this goodie is just a sweepstakes prize, but man would I love to see something like this for sale in the stores…
Shown above is a page from a manga that tells the story of the founding of Apple Computer — you can see Woz in the first panel, Jobs in the center and the Apple ][ flying through outer space at the bottom! From my crude Google translation it looks like manga is from 1984 and was titled Korokorokomikku and included as a separate booklet which was inserted into a computer programming magazine of that era.
Special thanks to Chris Liendo for finding this link.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 24, 2008 in Cinema, Tech
This is pretty amazing: It turns out that the song Daisy Bell which HAL sings in 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on one of the first songs that a computer was programmed to sing with a synthetic voice. It seems that Arthur C. Clarke was visiting Bell Labs back in the early 60s when he came across a demonstration of the new technology!
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 17, 2008 in Science, Tech
This 1960 promotional film for the UNIVAC computer is amazing to watch — it’s amazing to think how much computing has changed in just a few decades: Computers have gone from being these large exotic machines to a disposable device that can fit in your pocket.
Shown above is the IBM 026 Printing Card Punch which is from the Vintage Computer Festival website. If you’re a lover of antique hardware there’s going to be a show coming up in September that’s worth catching:
The 5th annual Vintage Computer Festival East will be held on Saturday, September 13th and Sunday, September 14th, at the InfoAge Learning Center at Wall Township, New Jersey. The event is sponsored by MARCH and VintageTech. The exact daily schedule will be announced shortly.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 3, 2008 in Science, Tech
Recently I was wandering through on of my favorite local bookstores here in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and I came across a beautiful coffee table book which featured some delicious photos of vintage computers:
What blew me away about the book was the sharp design and the photographs by Mark Richards. What’s amazing to me about these artifacts is that theyshow just how fast everything has changed in the world of computers in the last few decades. If you look at an automobile from 1970 the industrial design may be a bit different, but what’s under the hood is pretty much the sam car that you’d see today. However with computers what would take up a room and require a team of experts to operate can now fit into a cell phone which can be operated by a child.
“…Then nerdcore came along. A largely white subgenre of hip-hop that celebrates the solitary pleasures of science fiction, computers and bad teenage movies, nerdcore is emerging from the shadows of the Internet, where it spent the last half-decade as an in-joke. This do-it-yourself brand of rap, part self-expression and part self-satire, has inspired two documentary films, and its own festival, Nerdapalooza, in California. This month, MC Chris — otherwise known as Christopher Ward, 31, the son of a finance executive from the affluent Chicago suburb of Libertyville, Ill. — will attempt an unprecedented nerdcore crossover when he joins mosh-pit-friendly rock acts like New Found Glory and Sum 41 on the Warped Tour.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 16, 2006 in Tech, Videogames
According to Wikipedia: “The Atari 2600, released in 1977, is the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges instead of having one or more games built in. Originally known as the Atari VCS—for Video Computer System—the machine’s name was changed to “Atari 2600” (from the unit’s Atari part number, CX2600) in 1982, after the release of the more advanced Atari 5200. It was wildly successful, and during the 1980s, “Atari” was a synonym for this model in mainstream media.”
Here’s a cool commercial from the golden age of video games:
