awesome-computer-history
An Awesome List of computer history videos, documentaries and related folklore
https://github.com/watson/awesome-computer-history
Last synced: 3 days ago
JSON representation
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Videos
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Old recordings
- United States Navy Training Media: Basic Mechanisms in Fire Control Computers
- Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks
- The Mother of All Demos
- Xerox Parc - Office Alto Commercial
- Part 1
- Part 2
- A Computer Animated Hand - One of the earliest examples of computer animation
- The Computer Literacy Project - 1989) - In the 1980s, the BBC explored the world of computing in The Computer Literacy Project (all episodes)
- KRON San Francisco: Primitive Internet report - KRON San Francisco news segment on how early home computer users could read their morning newspapers online
- The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive
- The UNIX System: Making Computers Easier to Use
- The Computer Chronicles - 2002) - All episodes <sup>[8.6/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421311/)</sup>. A few of the notable episodes are:
- Simulator Software
- Artificial Intelligence
- The Internet
- We Are Apple - Corporate song that was used during the Macintosh rollout in January, 1984
- Thinking Allowed - Artificial Intelligence - Interview with John McCarthy, creator of Lisp and one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence
- Erlang: The Movie
- Net Cafe - 2002) - All episodes <sup>[?/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1057240/)</sup>. A few of the notable episodes are:
- Hackers - Looks at the hacker culture and their influence on the early growth of the internet
- Politics on the Web - Institute for Global Communications, Cyperpunks and Anarchists Press
- Steve Jobs: The Crazy Ones - Steve Jobs talks about The Crazy Ones marketing campaign on internal Apple meeting
- United States Navy Training Media: Basic Mechanisms in Fire Control Computers
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Documentaries
- Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age - Documentary about a 1984 hacker conference <sup>[7.6/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1191116/)</sup>
- The KGB, the Computer, and Me - With computer scientist Clifford Stoll <sup>[8.0/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308449/)</sup>
- Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires - History of the personal computer <sup>[8.5/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115398/)</sup>
- The Internet: Behind the Web - Documentary about development of internet from 1950-60's to 21st century.
- Code Rush - The story of Netscape and the birth of Mozilla <sup>[7.3/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499004/)</sup>
- The Code - The Histroy of Linux & FOSS <sup>[7.5/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315417/)</sup>
- Revolution OS - The story of GNU/linux and Open Source Movement <sup>[7.3/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308808/)</sup>
- The Secret History Of Hacking - History of early hackers <sup>[7.6/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2335921/)</sup>
- BBS The Documentary - History of the Bulletin Board System <sup>[8.5/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460402/)</sup>
- The Codebreakers - Documentary about how poor countries are using free and open source software (FOSS) for development purposes.
- Hackers Are People Too - Documentary about what hackers are <sup>[6.0/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1279942/)</sup>
- Download: The True Story of the Internet - A documentary television series about Internet history <sup>[7.8/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1684716/)</sup>
- Part 1: Browser Wars
- Part 2: Search
- Part 3: Bubble - com crash of 2000 and the mainstays of the Internet: Amazon.com and Ebay
- Part 4: People Power
- Something Ventured - The history of early venture capital <sup>[7.0/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1737747/)</sup>
- Code 2600 - Documents the Info-Tech Age, told by the events and people who helped build and manipulate it <sup>[7.4/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1830538/)</sup>
- We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists - A documentary on the workings and beliefs of the self-described "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous <sup>[7.3/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2177843/)</sup>
- Silicon Valley - A PBS "American Experience" documentary about the start of Silicon Valley <sup>[7.9/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2547530/)</sup>
- TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard
- DEFCON: The Documentary - Documentary about DEFCON, the biggest hacker conference <sup>[5.8/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3010462/)</sup>
- Downloaded - The Napster Revolution, a documentary that explores the downloading revolution <sup>[6.9/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2033981/)</sup>
- Birth of BASIC - Invention of the Basic computer language.
- The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz - The story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz <sup>[8.1/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3268458/)</sup>
- Rise of the Hackers - Harnessing cryptography to stay a step ahead of cybercriminals <sup>[7.5/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3979842/)</sup>
- Silicon Cowboys - Documentary detailing the story of Compaq, its three founders and how it took on IBM at the height of its PC dominance. <sup>[6.8/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/)</sup>
- BBS The Documentary - History of the Bulletin Board System <sup>[8.5/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460402/)</sup>
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Reflective interviews
- Steve Jobs - The Lost Interview - A conversation with Steve Jobs as he was running NeXT, the company he had founded after leaving Apple <sup>[8.1/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2104994/)</sup>
- The Great 202 Jailbreak - David Brailsford
- UNIX Special: Profs Kernighan & Brailsford - David Brailsford interviews Brian Kernighan
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Talks & Lectures
- Computers From The Inside Out - Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture. Not about computer history per se, but about how computers work
- The Origins of Linux - Linus Torvalds - Linus Torvalds tells the story of how he went from writing code as a graduate student to become an icon for open source software.
- The Secret History of Silicon Valley - Talk by Steve Blank at the Computer History Museum
- Crockford on JavaScript - Volume 1: The Early Years - Not actually about JavaScript, but about early computing history
- Bret Victor - The Future of Programming - Humorous talk about the future of programming as seen from 1973
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Movies
- Pirates of Silicon Valley - History of Apple and Microsoft <sup>[7.3/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/)</sup>
- Micro Men - History of Acorn Computers and Sinclair Research <sup>[7.6/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1459467/)</sup>
- The Social Network - The history of the birth of Facebook <sup>[7.7/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/)</sup>
- Halt and Catch Fire - 2017) - Set in the 1980s, this series dramatizes the personal computing boom <sup>[8.4/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543312/)</sup>
- Steve Jobs - The story shows Steve Jobs behind the scenes of Apple's iconic product launches. <sup>[7.2/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2080374/)</sup>
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Commercials
- Apple 1984 Super Bowl Commercial - Apple 1984 Super Bowl Commercial Introducing Macintosh Computer <sup>[7.8/10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4227346/)</sup>
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Audio
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Podcasts
- Internet History Podcast - history-podcast/id829119009))
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Texts
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Folklore
- The Humble Programmer - Dijkstra's overview of the programming universe as he saw it in 1972
- Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL
- Epigrams on Programming
- The Story of Mel
- Unix Recovery Legend
- The Conscience of a Hacker - The Hacker Manifesto
- The Jargon File
- The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
- A Cypherpunk's Manifesto
- The Story of Getting SSH Port 22
- The case of the 500-mile email
- UTF-8 history
- 20 Years — One Standard: The Story of TCP/IP
- How Steve Wozniak Wrote BASIC for the Original Apple From Scratch
- The Story of the PING Program
- Unix Recovery Legend
- In the Beginning…Was the Command Line
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Announcements and Memos
- What would you like to see most in minix? - First public mention of what would later become Linux
- The Internet Tidal Wave - Bill Gates' memo to all executive staff within Microsoft on assigning the Internet the highest level of importance
- A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass... - Poul-Henning Kamp coining the term bikeshedding
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Source Code
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Announcements and Memos
- C compiler - The earliest known versions of Dennis Ritchie's first C compiler ([GitHub code mirror](https://github.com/mortdeus/legacy-cc))
- UNIX - Continuous Unix commit history from 1972 until today
- Adobe Photoshop - The first version of Adobe Photoshop (written in Pascal)
- Apollo 11 Guidance Computer - Original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) source code for the command and lunar modules
- MS-DOS - Version 1.25 and 2.0
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Websites
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Announcements and Memos
- First website ever made - CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research Organisation) website
- The Amazing FishCam - The Fishcam was the second live camera on the web and is the oldest camera site still in existence
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Programming Languages
Categories
Sub Categories