In the first full-length computer-animated movie by Pixar, a little boy’s toys are thrown into chaos when a new Space Ranger arrives to vie for supremacy with the boy’s old favorite (a wooden cowboy). When the feuding toys become lost, they are forced to set aside their differences to get…
Cliff Stoll’s “The Cuckoo’s Egg” was on the best seller list in 1989 for more than four months. It chronicles the story of his pursuit of a German computer spy. A systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, he’d detected anomalies in his network, discovering an apparently authorized user was using…
The story of TRON starts in the fall of 1975 when a young animation artist named Steven Lisberger witnessed a demonstration of computer generated imagery during a gathering of Boston-area filmmakers. Dr. Phillip Mittelman, president and founder of the Mathematical Application Group Inc. hoped to generate interest and ultimately business…
From Time Magazine, 1982: By The Millions, It Is Beeping Its Way Into Offices, Schools And Homes By Otto Friedrich. Reported by Michael Mortiz,San Francisco, J. Madeleine Nash,Chicago and Peter Stoler,New York WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME, the bright red advertisement asks in mock irritation, WHAT A PERSONAL COMPUTER CAN…
Byte was a hugely influential computer magazine that begain in 1975 and was published throughout the 1980s. It covered development in the entire field of software and computers, was published monthly, and sold for a yearly subscription of $10. The first issue was printed in September 1975, and featured ads…
Computer engineer Paul Baran of BBN (Bolt,Beranek,Newman) writes a paper, “On Distributed Communication Networks”, describing what later becomes known as packet switching, in which digital data are sent over a distributed network in small units and reassembled into a whole message at the receiving end. Packet switching will be an…
In 1938 Orson Wells’ infamous “War of the Worlds” was heard on the radio. Scripted as a series of short news briefs describing an alien invasion, it caused massive panic and revealed the power of mass media. Despite four announcements that it was fictional, thousands of calls flooded police departments…
Written by the mathematician Alan Turing and published in 1936, this paper demonstrates that there are problems to which no mechanically computable solution exists by detailing the design of a theoretical digital computer. German mathematician David Hilbert theorized in 1928 that all math problems could be solved and that a…