Month: August 2020

Ep 276: Binary boats and wireless

Ep 276: Binary boats and wireless

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.

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Ep 275: Telegraph and tabulation

Ep 275: Telegraph and tabulation

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 read and write it. Companies such as IBM were founded to keep track of it all. Wires stretched around the world to send messages fast enough to coordinate the new railroads, and new machines were invented to read and write faster than any human operators could manage.

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Ep 274: And the wheels keep turning

Ep 274: And the wheels keep turning

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.

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Ep 273: building bones and binary

Ep 273: building bones and binary

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.

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