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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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 “Turing complete” means.
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