The Columbia’s last flight - 17 years after the space shuttle Challenger broke up during launch, the space shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry. We take a look at what happened and why. Here’s an

The Challenger’s last flight - In January of 1986, the space shuttle Challenger came apart 73 seconds after launch. We take a look at what happened and why. Here’s a sight on the first glide test of t

The space shuttle - With 135 missions over a 30 year period, the STS was enormously successful. It will take another episode or two to cover, but we start with an overview of NASA’s space shuttle prog

Spider silk? - Brother Phil and I were on the porch the other day, and the topic swung round to the amazing mechanical strength of spider web. He bumped into something about some piece of clothing that had been made from the stuff.

Say cheese! - Today we look at the history of photography, and how the camera helped create the modern computer. Here’s a website with a thumbnail sketch of the history of photography. - Unraveling the History of Photography -

A lucky accident - Around the 1950s, many labs were attempting to figure out how to manufacture transistors. Even more exciting was the idea that many electrical components, entire circuits could be put on one crystal.

Back up a bit - A large percentage of the show’s staff all hurt their backs at once—the producer, the audio editor, founder, writer, research department head, and the host. Mind you, those are all the same guy so… We did manage to talk a little bit mo...

An early AI, and the birth of the transistor - Vacuum tubes were all well and good, but they were bulky, hot, power hungry, and prone to failure. Early on, artificial neural networks showed promise, as even if tubes broke while it was running,

wires magnets and memory - We spend some more time with some more vintage tech. This time we look at audio recorded on spools of wire, teletype equipment for input and output, and the magnetic core. Check out the links below to catch some nifty videos...

In memory of vintage memory - Before microchips, before solid state transistors, early electronic computers had to hold information somewhere… somehow… Join us as we look at some old methods of storing electronic memory.