Finally, some actual computers! - We started with the stone age, back in episode 270. Today, we finally get to look at an all electronic, Turing complete, programmable computer. We also take a short side trip to more or less fail to explain what “Turi...

World wars, cyphers and subs - War grips the globe, twice. Technology pushes forward, including the specialized calculating machines to encrypt messages on the one hand, and break the encryption of the enemy on the other.

Vacuum tubes, with a side order of steampunk - We talk about vacuum tubes, how they work and how they made radio and telephone work so much better. We also spend some time talking about the very first computer programmer, the mother of steam punk,

Phil’s hundredth episode! - It took a little over two years, what with the one episode a week format and all, but this is Phil’s one-hundredth time as our co-host extraordinaire! We share some of the things that we couldn’t squeeze into previous episo...

Binary boats and wireless - We spend some time with the ships and subs of the American Civil war, take our hats off to George Boole, and watch the beginning of radio. Here are a couple of links with more about George Boole. -

Telegraph and tabulation - After the battery was invented, people began using electricity to do things like discover new elements and create new and better materials. Meanwhile, the punch card became a way to record information so that a machine could...

And the wheels keep turning - From water wheels to steam engines, to the taming of electricity, join us for another instalment in our episodes about where computers came from. Here’s something on Francis Bacon’s binary code. -

building bones and binary - We rewind slightly to cover the beginnings of automated logic. Then we have a look-see at the mechanical calculators of the 17th century, and the people who made it happen. Along the way, we find the birth of binary.

The fall of Rome and the rise of zero - We’d planned to get a bit further, but there was just too much nifty history. Water wheels, paper mills, the fall of Rome, the golden age of Islam, and the spread of the number zero,

which numbers count? - If you want to come up with a machine that computes, (a computer,) you need numbers with which to compute. Before we had the numbers we know and love, several other numbering systems were tried.