Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:14 — 14.5MB) | Embed
We follow the development of airplane engines and rockets from the wright Brothers through the end of world war II. By the end, the stage is set for an arms race, and the space race.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:32 — 14.7MB) | Embed
The early history of flight is strewn with the wreckage of many strange devices… and the people who invented them. From foolish feathered folk flinging themselves from a far, to the powered and controlled flight pioneered by the Wright brothers, we take a look and how we learned to make the sky our playground.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:57 — 17.1MB) | Embed
We take a look at the very beginning of rockets, including the somewhat obscure origins of gunpowder. The cherry on the top of our explosive cake is a story about how one man tried to build a huge gun that could launch things into space.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:03 — 11.3MB) | Embed
This week we begin a look at air and space travel. We start our look with the stone age, when we began to learn what we’d need to know in order to fly.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:07 — 14.5MB) | Embed
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. After talking about it for a while, it hit me that I didn’t actually know what I was talking about. Thus, for the last episode of 2020, we dig into the topic of regular silk, spiders, and spider silk.
Happy holidays, and we’ll see you again on January 14, 2021.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:48 — 16.2MB) | Embed
Today we look at the history of photography, and how the camera helped create the modern computer.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:54 — 12.8MB) | Embed
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. There were several methods attempted to solve the problems that occurred, until one day, in 1955, a lucky accident suddenly made everything much easier.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:33 — 3.9MB) | Embed
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 more about neural networks and early AI research. Hope you enjoy the unusually short episode.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:55 — 12.5MB) | Embed
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, it would keep working. Meanwhile, the transistor is invented, and the unreliable tubes slowly became obsolete.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:37 — 11.9MB) | Embed
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 of this stuff being demonstrated and explained.
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