The original IBM ThinkPad, a bit of corporate pen-and-paper swag from the 1980s that later inspired the name for their long-lived laptop line.
(Via A Continuous Lean via 5cience)
Tag: technology
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The Original IBM (pen-and-paper) Thinkpad
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Western Electric and Bell Labs Test Equipment Gallery
A beautiful photo set of Western Electric and Bell Labs test equipment from Flickr user Marc F. Vintage telephony pr0n.
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Heres a Toast to Alan Turing Born in Harsher
here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?Alan Turing by poet Matt Harvey, on the occasion of British prime minister Gordon Brown’s official posthumous apology to the mathematician and computer theorist. Originally read/published on the BBC Radio 4 broadcast Saturday Live, 12/9/2009.
(Via Language Log, from a mostly unrelated post on the language of homophobia in Jamaican culture, which is itself worth reading – depressing, but worthwhile)
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Laser Cave Prototype
Interactive Audio Visual installation for
Mekanism’s “After School Special” art show
location: gray area foundation for the arts http://www.gaffta.org/concept/construction : suryummy
visuals : suryummy
audio : suryummy, herbie hancock, various manipulated retro logos
software : VDMXThis is like a model of the world I wanted to live in when I was a kid, somewhere between Tron’s MCP mainframe world, Cybertron, and Marble Madness.
(Via Make)
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The 1949 Harwell/WITCH
The “world’s oldest [working] computer”, the c.1949 Harwell/WITCH, is undergoing restoration for display at Bletchley Park’s National Museum of Computing, and will be exhibited next to the Colossus Mk2. I’d make them play chess against each other.
(Via El Reg)
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The So Called Mother of All Demos the
The so-called “Mother of All Demos”, the technology presentation given by Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute, which introduced to the world a number of useful developments: hypertext, the computer mouse, timesharing, email, video conferencing… And this was a bit over forty years ago, just before the ARPANET went online. Pretty amazing times.
The videos are available in more digestible chunks over on Stanford’s MouseSite.
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First TV Broadcast: Papier Mâché Felix the Cat
This papier-mâché Felix the Cat was the first image to be broadcast over experimental television in preparation for the first public RCA broadcast in 1928. Black and white and made of durable material, they had him revolving on a turntable, beaming out as a tiny test image so engineers could adjust the signal. Early TV technology fascinates me.
There’s more good info on early test patterns over at Design Observer.
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Static: an Interactive Approach to Animation
Static: an Interactive Approach to Animation by Jack Lykins. Using a turntable and midi-controller via Max/MSP Jitter to drive the playback of an animation sequence. (via Cartoon Brew)
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An Italian vision of a scientific Utopia
The science journal Nature reviews the new book Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism by Christine Poggi. The review itself is a decent synopsis of the Futurist movement in art and literature and the role that modern technology played in shaping European political thought in the early 20th Century. (Note: the Italian Futurist utopian dream devolved rapidly into the very frightening march of fascism, and would eventually become our model for Blade Runner-style sci-fi dystopia…not something to idealize, but worth learning a lesson from)
The Futurists imagined a world governed by electricity. Their electrical fantasies, writes Poggi, take a Utopian turn in their vision and evolve into an orgy of violence. They saw Italy as being “fertilized” by electricity, banishing hunger, poverty, disease and work. Air temperature and ventilation would be controlled automatically, telephones would be wireless, and crops and forests would spring up at speed. But in this world of ease and plenty, fierce competition would arise over superabundant industrial production. War would break out, fought by “small mechanics” whose flesh resembled steel. Deploying “steel elephants” and battery-powered trains from afar, they would wage a thrilling interplanetary war.
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High-Definition Etch-a-Sketch
A 52″, net-enabled Etch-A-Sketch replica fashioned out of a projection tv, tent poles, stepper motors, and a golf tee.