
Ask HN: Material on early computing history and innovation? - eatbitseveryday
I am not old enough to have lived through this part of history, but as I age, I realize the value in experience as it relates to understanding something (i.e. historical events). Recognizing the value in many of the concepts I use today, I believe, would be better reading more about the history - what was computing life like decades ago, what limitations were there, and what did programmers have to think about when building systems?<p>I searched HN and only found this: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15865504<p>Are there any books, lectures, or other detailed materials that would help me and the younger crowd learn more? For example, a detailed discussion of PDP-11 or other systems.<p>I&#x27;m technical (PhD in CS) but realize my history is weak, and would very much enjoy reading a balance of technical details with a broader perspective on the impact.
======
verdverm
Walter Isaacson, The Innovators is a great book

------
mindcrime
I can give you the names of a handful of books that might be useful. Some are
more technical, some less so. Some are more about personalities, some about
the business aspects of things, some more about the actual technology. I don't
really have time to try and categorize them all, so here's a big dump of the
ones I have and/or am familiar with that seem at least somewhat related.

 _The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-
Engineeri...](https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-
Anniversary/dp/0201835959/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fred+brooks&qid=1595010976&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-
Le...](https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-
Levy/dp/1449388396/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hackers+heroes&qid=1595010072&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _The Cuckoo 's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-
Espiona...](https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-
Espionage/dp/1416507787/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cuckoo%27s+egg&qid=1595010272&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-
Late/dp/0684832...](https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-
Late/dp/0684832674/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VVOETG6ECK3Y&dchild=1&keywords=where+wizards+stay+up+late&qid=1595008923&s=books&sprefix=where+wizards+%2Cstripbooks%2C192&sr=1-1)

 _Open: How Compaq Ended IBM 's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern
Computing_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Open-Compaq-Domination-Helped-
Computi...](https://www.amazon.com/Open-Compaq-Domination-Helped-
Computing/dp/1937856992/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=open+how+compaq&qid=1595009400&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Decline and Fall of the American Programmer_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-
Yourdon-1...](https://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-
Yourdon-1993-06-16/dp/B01FKSGVQ8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=decline+and+fall+of+the+american+programmer&qid=1595011243&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/013121831X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&key...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/013121831X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rise+and+resurrection+yourdon&qid=1595011380&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions,
Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can 't Get a Date_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Robert-X-
Cringely/dp/0887308554/ref=s...](https://www.amazon.com/Robert-X-
Cringely/dp/0887308554/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2U1MSOCMFGBLX&dchild=1&keywords=accidental+empires+by+robert+x.+cringely&qid=1595011791&s=books&sprefix=accidental+empires%2Cstripbooks%2C216&sr=1-1)

 _Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-
Ora...](https://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-
Oracle/dp/0743225058/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=softwar+ellison&qid=1595009420&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Winners, Losers & Microsoft_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-
Microsoft-Competition-...](https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-
Competition-
Independent/dp/0945999801/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=winners+losers+and+microsoft&qid=1595009438&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Microsoft Secrets_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Secrets-
audiobook/dp/B019G2...](https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Secrets-
audiobook/dp/B019G2YO7M/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=microsoft+secrets&qid=1595009457&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn
of Cyberculture_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/The-Friendly-Orange-Glow-
audiobook/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/The-Friendly-Orange-Glow-
audiobook/dp/B0777XSZKW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=friendly+orange+glow&qid=1595009476&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Troublemakers: Silicon Valley 's Coming of Age_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Troublemakers-Silicon-Valleys-
Coming-...](https://www.amazon.com/Troublemakers-Silicon-Valleys-Coming-
Age/dp/1451651511/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=troublemakers+silicon&qid=1595009493&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-
Empire/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-
Empire/dp/0887306292/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hard+drive+bill+gates&qid=1595009517&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture_
\- [https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Cult...](https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Culture/dp/0812972155/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=masters+of+doom&qid=1595009533&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and The Technical Wizards Behind the
Supercomputer_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-
Su...](https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-
Supercomputer/dp/0471048852/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+supermen+seymour&qid=1595009554&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Bitwise: A Life in Code_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Bitwise-Life-Code-David-
Auerbach/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/Bitwise-Life-Code-David-
Auerbach/dp/1101972149/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bitwise+life+in+code&qid=1595009570&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Gates_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Gates-Microsofts-Reinvented-
Industry-...](https://www.amazon.com/Gates-Microsofts-Reinvented-Industry-
Himself/dp/0671880748/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=%22gates%22+paul+andrews&qid=1595009629&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _We Are The Nerds_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Nerds-
audiobook/dp/B07H5Q5JGS/...](https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Nerds-
audiobook/dp/B07H5Q5JGS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=we+are+the+nerds&qid=1595009644&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _A People 's History of Computing In The United States_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Computing-United-
Stat...](https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Computing-United-
States/dp/0674970977/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=people%27s+history+of+computing&qid=1595009661&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Fire In The Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Fire-in-Valley-
audiobook/dp/B071YYZJG...](https://www.amazon.com/Fire-in-Valley-
audiobook/dp/B071YYZJG5/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fire+in+the+valley&qid=1595009680&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-
iPhone...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-
iPhone/dp/1631493078/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=how+the+internet+happened&qid=1595009697&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Steve Jobs_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-
Isaacson/dp/1451648...](https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-
Isaacson/dp/1451648537/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jobs+isaacson&qid=1595009754&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-
Innovatio...](https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-
Innovation/dp/0143122797/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=idea+factory&qid=1595009769&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Coders_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Making-Tribe-Remaking-
World/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Making-Tribe-Remaking-
World/dp/0735220565/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=coders&qid=1595010398&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One
Quest for Transcendent Software_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-in-Code-
Scott-Rosenberg-audi...](https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-in-Code-Scott-
Rosenberg-
audiobook/dp/B00AQ5DOCA/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dreaming+in+code&qid=1595010517&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _The Pentagon 's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret
Military Research Agency_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-
Uncensored-Americas-T...](https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-
Americas-Top-
Secret/dp/0316371661/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=darpa&qid=1595010561&s=books&sr=1-1)

 _The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That
Changed the World_ \- [https://www.amazon.com/Imagineers-War-Untold-Pentagon-
Change...](https://www.amazon.com/Imagineers-War-Untold-Pentagon-
Changed/dp/0804169721/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=darpa&qid=1595010618&s=books&sr=1-2)

 _The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering_ \-
[https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-
Eng...](https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Social-History-Software-
Engineering/dp/0321903420/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=history+of+software+engineering&qid=1595010761&s=books&sr=1-2)

Also...

"The Mother of All Demos" by Doug Englebart - [https://youtu.be/yJDv-
zdhzMY](https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY)

"Jobs vs Gates" \- [https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Vs-Gates-Hippie-
Nerd/dp/B077KB96...](https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Vs-Gates-Hippie-
Nerd/dp/B077KB96MC/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-
tv&sr=1-2)

"Welcome to Macintosh" \- [https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Macintosh-Guy-
Kawasaki/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Macintosh-Guy-
Kawasaki/dp/B00E9Q2GG2/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-
tv&sr=1-3)

"Pirates of Silicon Valley" \- [https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Silicon-Valley-
Noah-Wyle/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Silicon-Valley-Noah-
Wyle/dp/B0009NSCS0/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-
tv&sr=1-4)

"Jobs" \- [https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Ashton-
Kutcher/dp/B00GME2NCG/ref...](https://www.amazon.com/Jobs-Ashton-
Kutcher/dp/B00GME2NCG/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=pirates+of+silicon+valley&qid=1595009886&s=movies-
tv&sr=1-5)

And while not a documentary, or meant to be totally historically accurate, the
TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" captures a lot of the _feel_ of the early days
of the PC era, through to the advent of the Internet era.

[https://www.amazon.com/I-O/dp/B00KCXJCEK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=U6Z...](https://www.amazon.com/I-O/dp/B00KCXJCEK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=U6Z2PPRSDD0R&dchild=1&keywords=halt+and+catch+fire&qid=1595009969&s=movies-
tv&sprefix=halt+and+c%2Cmovies-tv%2C188&sr=1-1)

And there's a ton of Macintosh history stuff captured at:

[https://www.folklore.org/](https://www.folklore.org/)

------
ipnon
This unfortunately is not the most studied field. The level of expertise to
make meaningful contributions requires being a skilled computer scientist and
historian.

The best surveys available are by Paul Ceruzzi[0], as far as I know. Even this
is lacking a bit because it focuses unduly on more recent business
developments like Microsoft's monopoly and the emergence of Linux. These
topics don't have much to do with the long development of computers themselves
I would say. One also begins in 1940, after a fair amount of interesting
history has already passed.

If you're looking for a more experimental approach, I would say you can focus
on just studying a few machines in-depth and glean quite a bit of the main
thread. For examples:

1\. Babbage's analytical machine and Lovelace's contributions. The birth of
computing was really a meeting of two minds. Babbage's machine was such an
oddity I think he had trouble imagining all of the possibilities himself.
Lovelace really does deserve quite a bit of credit for her collaboration, and
she really transformed Babbage's crank wheel calculator into the sort of
algorithmic processor we know today.

2\. The IBM 360. It's ubiquity in the mainframe means there are still plenty
running in the wild, which is not something you can say about most computers
from that era. IBM's foothold in the expensive hardware business meant that
they effectively controlled the software business as well. It's hard to
exaggerate how closed computing was during this era.

3\. The PDP-7 through the PDP-11. If the 360 was when computing became
mainstream and closed, the PDP-11 was when it proliferated. The PDP-11 was
when trends in time sharing, price, and computer science converged. The C
language and Unix-like systems we know and love today, including all of their
derivatives, could not have been born earlier without this specific machine.

My suggestion would be to read a general survey, and if you are still
interested and curious, find some of the original documentation and handbooks
for the computers of the era you are most interested in. A surprising amount
of emulators exist for any pivotal computer of the past like those 3 that I
mentioned.[1] Programming them is an exercise in humility and appreciation for
how far computers have come.

Finally, I would suggest going to visit one of the old machines in person. The
Computer History Museum[2] has many still working exhibitions, but if
traveling to Mountain View is too far, there are still many working examples
scattered around the world in universities and private collections. The
tangles of wires, dim hums, and clicking terminals are precious experiences.

The history of just memory is equally fascinating[3], but I think I've said
enough here.

Good luck and have fun!

[0] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing-
seco...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing-second-
edition) or
[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computing-1](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computing-1)

[1] This PDP-11 emulator is a treat for the simulation of the case and it's
buttons.
[https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/pdp11.html](https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/pdp11.html)

[2] [https://computerhistory.org](https://computerhistory.org)

[3] For example,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory)

