[00:00.000 --> 00:00.600]  Thank you.
[00:02.820 --> 00:05.500]  So I'm going to hack my own presentation.
[00:06.520 --> 00:11.760]  I was supposed to talk about research techniques and fact versus truth, which I'll talk about a little bit.
[00:12.120 --> 00:18.500]  But if anyone coming specifically for that, I've talked to management of the show and changed my topic a little bit, so I apologize for that.
[00:18.740 --> 00:21.520]  But I think this is just as, if not more interesting.
[00:22.800 --> 00:23.740]  So my name is Evan.
[00:24.020 --> 00:26.900]  I've been a technology journalist for about 18 years.
[00:27.160 --> 00:28.600]  Well, not about for 18 years.
[00:29.200 --> 00:29.980]  And more importantly, I've been a technology journalist for about 18 years.
[00:29.980 --> 00:34.140]  More important, I run a nonprofit organization called the Vintage Computer Federation.
[00:34.860 --> 00:37.540]  And we are a national 501 nonprofit.
[00:38.400 --> 00:39.880]  We do four main things.
[00:40.060 --> 00:43.200]  We have national scale events and the Vintage Computer Festival series.
[00:43.880 --> 00:49.500]  We own the largest discussion site on the Internet for the vintage computing hobby, which is the Vintage Computer Forum.
[00:50.380 --> 00:52.540]  We have our own museum in New Jersey.
[00:52.960 --> 00:55.260]  And we try to incubate local chapters.
[00:56.600 --> 01:04.500]  So anyway, after about maybe about a dozen years of being a historian and 18 years as a journalist, I've learned a few things about research.
[01:05.440 --> 01:07.640]  And I'll hope to share some of those with you today.
[01:08.960 --> 01:15.140]  So what I'm going to do is the first 20-ish minutes, I'm going to talk about some history stuff.
[01:16.000 --> 01:23.940]  And the latter 10 minutes or so, I'll talk about some research techniques and kind of merge them by example of research I've done.
[01:24.580 --> 01:33.660]  And then at the end, we'll do kind of an ask me anything about history or research or the Venn diagram inside that.
[01:37.020 --> 01:39.120]  I can't do a show of hands because I can't see anything.
[01:39.240 --> 01:40.320]  It's dark out there and right up here.
[01:42.340 --> 01:43.240]  But I'll try anyway.
[01:45.180 --> 01:54.140]  How many of you are aware that computer history is a thing beyond just museums and Steve Jobs movies and stuff?
[01:55.540 --> 01:56.700]  I can't see anything.
[01:56.700 --> 01:57.780]  It's pitch black out there.
[01:58.040 --> 01:59.680]  So I don't know.
[02:00.820 --> 02:01.320]  Okay.
[02:01.540 --> 02:02.340]  That's good, I guess.
[02:04.180 --> 02:06.340]  Most people, I mean, everyone knows what a car is.
[02:06.340 --> 02:17.240]  If you take a hundred people off the street and say, you know, you know that there are such a thing as old car shows or people who collect old cars, people will say, I guess, you know, basically, yeah.
[02:18.000 --> 02:23.000]  But if you pick, even though they're just going to point A to point B, they're aware that such people do exist.
[02:24.020 --> 02:31.260]  But if I take a hundred IT guys or girls off the street, many of them tell me, well, why would I want an old computer when I could have a new one?
[02:32.180 --> 02:33.700]  And I don't understand.
[02:33.780 --> 02:34.480]  There's a step right here.
[02:34.560 --> 02:35.460]  I'm going to make sure I don't fall off it.
[02:36.320 --> 02:37.780]  So I don't understand it at all.
[02:39.180 --> 02:45.460]  The vintage computing... so basically there's four categories of computer history in the world today.
[02:46.800 --> 02:49.480]  One of them is the hobby side, the hobbyist side.
[02:49.600 --> 02:53.580]  Those of us who are collectors of historic computing.
[02:54.980 --> 03:07.240]  Historic generally means, say, 50s to 80s, after which are mostly boring beige boxes, with some exceptions, and before which they're mostly, you know, darn near the size of this room, with some exceptions.
[03:09.900 --> 03:14.880]  There are collectors, like me, and there are accumulators, to use a computer term.
[03:15.280 --> 03:18.520]  People who aren't so much collectors, they just never got rid of stuff in the first place.
[03:19.320 --> 03:22.300]  I suspect many of you are accumulators and don't know it yet.
[03:24.440 --> 03:27.180]  There's the academic side of computer history.
[03:27.400 --> 03:33.620]  There are PhDs at every major university in what they call science, technology, and society.
[03:35.420 --> 03:41.420]  There's two or three professional organizations, ACM chapters, that sort of thing.
[03:41.540 --> 03:48.740]  There's something called the International Federation of Information Processing, and they have a history SIG, something called SHOT, the Society for the History of Technology.
[03:49.100 --> 03:51.200]  They have a history, computer history SIG.
[03:52.520 --> 04:05.120]  And it's interesting because many people on the hobbyist side look at the professors and professionals and say, well, you know, they can't work a screwdriver, they can't solder, they've never got their hands dirty, what do they know?
[04:05.280 --> 04:06.380]  They just read and write books.
[04:07.260 --> 04:12.640]  And the professionals say, the hobbyists, they're like Civil War reenactors, they're good for trivia, what do they know?
[04:14.560 --> 04:17.220]  And both sides are wrong and right.
[04:21.230 --> 04:28.210]  There's also sort of a professional side of computer history, museums and archival groups and that sort of thing.
[04:29.230 --> 04:40.290]  One of my favorites, there's many, but one of my favorites is called the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota, which is like a white glove computer history document archival organization.
[04:40.290 --> 04:41.470]  Highly recommend them.
[04:43.030 --> 04:54.950]  And then there's mainstream history, which the general public thinks Steve Jobs invented computers and, you know, Motorola invented a cell phone and all that kind of crazy stuff.
[04:56.050 --> 04:57.010]  None of which is true.
[04:57.290 --> 04:58.450]  I invented all those things.
[05:01.130 --> 05:02.110]  My name is Al Gore.
[05:03.810 --> 05:06.510]  But by the way, he also never said what they said he said.
[05:07.770 --> 05:18.030]  What Al Gore actually did, in case anyone's wondering, is he was a leader on a lot of congressional committees that funded the early ARPANET research.
[05:18.370 --> 05:20.750]  So we do owe him a debt of gratitude to that.
[05:20.930 --> 05:25.890]  And no less than Vint Cerf himself has said, we owe him a debt of gratitude to that.
[05:26.010 --> 05:27.170]  So who would have questioned Vint Cerf?
[05:29.750 --> 05:35.170]  What I think is interesting is that in the last four or five years, there's been a resurgence.
[05:35.530 --> 05:36.790]  Not a resurgence.
[05:36.910 --> 05:43.630]  There's been a surgence in a surgence, or there's been a surging in computer history topics.
[05:45.270 --> 05:50.830]  I pin it on when Steve Jobs died, because there were lots of historic people who have died before him, obviously.
[05:51.710 --> 05:58.070]  And even the same year he died, we lost the guys who did C and Unix, and we lost a lot of AI people the last couple of years.
[06:01.390 --> 06:18.010]  And even though as we go forward in history, through generations of computing, from mainframes to minicomputers to microcomputers to pocket computers, fewer people proportionally are as nostalgic about the past, because it wasn't any big deal to use computers in the younger generations.
[06:18.750 --> 06:20.670]  But there's so many more of those people.
[06:21.530 --> 06:26.590]  So Steve Jobs is the first person who was transcended just the computer field.
[06:26.810 --> 06:33.670]  He was the first mainstream public figure from the microcomputer generation, from my generation to people in the 30s and 40s who died.
[06:34.150 --> 06:40.130]  And it seems like a lot more people in the general public care about computer history now since Steve Jobs died.
[06:41.910 --> 06:43.810]  A lot of them still get it wrong, but they care.
[06:43.930 --> 06:44.450]  That's a good thing.
[06:45.090 --> 06:47.770]  So thank you Steve Jobs for that, for dying.
[06:48.950 --> 06:50.430]  I don't mean it that way, I'm sorry.
[06:51.590 --> 06:54.110]  But he did something for us on his deathbed.
[06:59.350 --> 07:03.310]  A lot of people in the public just, they don't know what they don't know.
[07:04.390 --> 07:13.730]  If you tell them IBM invented their computer or anything, Bill Gates or Dell or anything they want, they'll just generally believe you.
[07:15.870 --> 07:21.050]  In the museum we have in New Jersey, the most common question we get from visitors is, well, what was the first computer?
[07:21.630 --> 07:24.390]  And they expect me just to say, oh, it was the Banana 3000.
[07:24.750 --> 07:26.130]  You know, it doesn't work that way.
[07:27.210 --> 07:29.070]  Anyone get the reference to Banana 3000?
[07:29.330 --> 07:29.790]  Banana Junior?
[07:31.610 --> 07:32.410]  Bill and Opus?
[07:33.410 --> 07:33.730]  Um.
[07:34.630 --> 07:34.950]  Um.
[07:35.570 --> 07:35.850]  Um.
[07:35.850 --> 07:40.390]  On Bloom County, there was making fun of the Macintosh in the 80s, the Banana 3000, because it was not the apples, the banana.
[07:41.270 --> 07:41.410]  Um.
[07:42.310 --> 07:42.570]  Anyway.
[07:44.110 --> 07:45.850]  So I'm going to get into a little bit of research side.
[07:47.750 --> 07:51.950]  The two words I hate the most are first and invent.
[07:53.530 --> 07:56.670]  Nothing in computer history was the first to fit.
[07:57.130 --> 07:57.870]  I'm sorry.
[07:58.490 --> 08:01.370]  And nothing was invented by one person, really.
[08:01.530 --> 08:02.610]  It just doesn't work that way.
[08:02.750 --> 08:03.710]  Everything is evolutionary.
[08:06.010 --> 08:08.310]  I assume most of you have heard of ENIAC.
[08:09.950 --> 08:10.510]  Anyone?
[08:10.790 --> 08:11.310]  One person?
[08:11.770 --> 08:11.970]  Okay.
[08:12.810 --> 08:13.070]  Okay.
[08:13.630 --> 08:16.130]  ENIAC was not the first computer.
[08:16.650 --> 08:18.630]  Don't let anybody ever tell you otherwise.
[08:20.110 --> 08:23.350]  There are lots and lots of qualifiers to what ENIAC was.
[08:23.730 --> 08:28.370]  And the thing is, you could say anything was the first or something with enough qualifiers.
[08:29.390 --> 08:32.570]  The boxer shorts I'm wearing are the first ones I wore today.
[08:33.450 --> 08:33.930]  Right?
[08:35.510 --> 08:36.350]  Anything is the first.
[08:36.490 --> 08:38.510]  This microphone is the first one I touched today.
[08:41.250 --> 08:48.870]  ENIAC was the first computer that was all electronic and general purpose and stored program.
[08:49.850 --> 08:52.150]  That's a lot different from being the first computer.
[08:53.790 --> 09:02.590]  Some people say the Antikythera mechanism that they found off the coast of Ireland, off Greece, a couple decades ago.
[09:03.230 --> 09:08.430]  But this was basically a mechanical calendar calculator kind of thing.
[09:08.430 --> 09:10.970]  There was no computing going on.
[09:12.850 --> 09:14.590]  Charles Babbage certainly has a claim.
[09:18.010 --> 09:25.710]  But in terms of electronic computers, it's interesting because, again, if you look at different categories, lots of different things are first.
[09:25.710 --> 09:36.170]  For example, the British Colossus, which was basically computed with words, not numbers, to do cryptology, or to do un-cryptology, decrypting.
[09:37.090 --> 09:43.190]  That was generally thought of as the first all-electronic computer, but it could do one thing.
[09:43.470 --> 09:45.370]  And some people say, was it even computing?
[09:45.390 --> 09:47.250]  Because it was working with words, not numbers.
[09:49.610 --> 10:02.450]  Whereas ENIAC added the general purpose, but before both of them, there were other computers that were general purpose, but they were electromechanical, with relays and solenoids and even gears and stuff.
[10:03.510 --> 10:13.850]  So even as early as the 1940s, we're talking about here, even at the very beginning, the first three or four years of computing, there were already claims at first.
[10:13.850 --> 10:24.630]  A computer in the UK, known as the Manchester Baby, until just a few months ago, historians generally accepted that, okay, well, this one had the first stored program capability.
[10:25.390 --> 10:28.890]  But that was just recently debunked by a British historian, no less.
[10:29.390 --> 10:32.690]  Actually, ENIAC was up and running in the stored program configuration before the Manchester machine.
[10:32.930 --> 10:38.170]  And by the way, what did stored program mean in 1946, or 1948, versus what it means today?
[10:38.730 --> 10:55.030]  So even from the beginning, first didn't mean much, because even if you fast forward 30 years to the, say, the summer of 1977, the magic summer, where there was the Apple II, TRS-80, and the Commodore PET, everyone says, well, which was the first?
[10:55.570 --> 10:58.270]  It doesn't, well, none of them, and it doesn't matter.
[10:58.950 --> 11:07.930]  We talk about generations, but there were lots of personal computers, and I mean it, lots of personal computers, 74, 75, 76, 77, before those three.
[11:08.510 --> 11:22.970]  And by the way, so if you were to draw a grid, say a six-by-six grid, a matrix, and say, okay, first to think of it, which no one can prove, first to sketch it on a napkin, first to patent it, first to advertise it, first to take money for one, first to ship one,
[11:23.370 --> 11:26.870]  first what exactly, first to prototype it, you know, what does first even mean?
[11:26.870 --> 11:31.990]  So, we ban the F-word in our circles.
[11:34.110 --> 11:37.090]  And we talk about generations, is the best way to talk about computer history.
[11:38.990 --> 11:41.630]  And, of course, the I-word, invent.
[11:43.330 --> 11:50.650]  So, I wrote a book called Abacus to Smartphone, abacussmartphone.com, my personal plug there.
[11:51.130 --> 11:53.770]  And it's about the history of mobile and portable computing.
[11:55.030 --> 11:58.770]  And I had this idea back in 2001, 2002.
[11:59.170 --> 12:04.290]  I was in a bookstore up in Boston, and I was doodling something on my Palm Pilot.
[12:06.370 --> 12:10.670]  And with a friend, and I said, I wonder where these came from, you know, who invented the PDAs.
[12:11.230 --> 12:14.210]  And I looked up on Yahoo, because there was no Googling back then, I guess.
[12:15.270 --> 12:18.590]  And so, I said, okay, well, Apple, Apple coined the term PDA, so okay, fine.
[12:19.050 --> 12:20.130]  I didn't really question it.
[12:21.290 --> 12:25.670]  But, I started pointing, you know, finding other stuff, and realized Apple did not, Apple did know such a thing.
[12:27.610 --> 12:30.810]  In the 1930s, there were panel trucks.
[12:31.770 --> 12:34.650]  In the 1950s, there were, I don't know, Land Cruisers.
[12:35.730 --> 12:37.210]  1970s, there were Broncos, right?
[12:37.730 --> 12:39.910]  And then, in the 90s, somebody invented the SUV.
[12:43.130 --> 12:50.170]  So, Apple coined the term personal digital assistant, but invent is a pretty strong word.
[12:51.170 --> 12:54.830]  Even Steve Wozniak, who is my hero on this planet.
[12:55.030 --> 12:56.290]  I grew up on an Apple II.
[12:56.370 --> 12:57.730]  I got an Apple II from my bar mitzvah.
[12:57.730 --> 13:04.230]  So, his autobiography, called I Woz, which is a highly recommended, it's a great book.
[13:04.590 --> 13:09.310]  The subtitle is How I Invented the Personal Computer.
[13:10.050 --> 13:12.290]  Well, I know Steve, great guy.
[13:13.490 --> 13:15.030]  He's awesome, he's mellow.
[13:15.350 --> 13:20.290]  But I said, Steve, you invented a personal computer, not the personal computer.
[13:21.090 --> 13:22.850]  And he blamed that one on the publisher.
[13:24.110 --> 13:25.970]  So, just skip the subtitle, it's a great book.
[13:27.730 --> 13:29.390]  Anyone know who Ralph Baer was?
[13:31.590 --> 13:32.570]  Anyone, Ralph Baer?
[13:33.290 --> 13:33.430]  No.
[13:33.690 --> 13:36.790]  Ralph Baer was, by the way, it's B-A-E-R, not E-A-R.
[13:37.750 --> 13:39.510]  He passed away a year or two ago.
[13:39.790 --> 13:42.570]  He's considered the father of home video games.
[13:43.210 --> 13:48.270]  He's the guy who did the prototype that became the Madden Vox Odyssey, which was the first home console.
[13:48.630 --> 13:54.010]  And again, I use first loosely there, but it's easy to document in that case.
[13:55.110 --> 13:56.630]  He also wrote an autobiography.
[13:58.710 --> 14:06.670]  And he says, well, not only was it the first home video game, he said this was the first video game ever.
[14:06.830 --> 14:10.490]  No one ever made a video game before me, which is ridiculous.
[14:10.730 --> 14:12.950]  There were lots of video games before him.
[14:13.790 --> 14:18.450]  There was Pong on other systems going back decades.
[14:19.850 --> 14:28.170]  And he says, well, they don't count because they were like this kind of technology behind a display versus that kind of technology behind the display.
[14:28.850 --> 14:31.430]  Who cares what technology was behind a display?
[14:31.870 --> 14:34.630]  A game on a video screen is a video game.
[14:36.670 --> 14:40.710]  So there's someone, you know, making their own qualification as a claim to fame, which is ridiculous.
[14:42.010 --> 14:42.550]  Martin Cooper.
[14:42.690 --> 14:43.870]  Anyone know who Martin Cooper is?
[14:43.870 --> 14:47.950]  And this is the last final example of before I stop my rant about first.
[14:48.910 --> 14:59.630]  Martin Cooper was an engineer slash manager at Motorola in the mid-70s who led a team of people who did the brick phone, the brick cell phone.
[15:03.070 --> 15:09.050]  And he's gone out of his way the last decade or so to tell people he's famous.
[15:09.050 --> 15:11.090]  He's been on TV commercials and stuff.
[15:11.490 --> 15:14.530]  Martin Cooper invented the cell phone by himself.
[15:17.950 --> 15:20.470]  Well, there's a thing called a cellular network.
[15:21.970 --> 15:27.530]  As early as the 1940s, Bell Labs was doing, you know, cellular honeycomb networking in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
[15:28.330 --> 15:32.590]  There were cellular networks and phones in other countries in Sweden and Japan.
[15:33.570 --> 15:37.210]  So, yeah, Motorola had the first commercial cell phone for sale in the U.S. made by a big team of people on top of a bigger team of people networking going back decades.
[15:42.510 --> 15:43.590]  But you wouldn't know that.
[15:43.710 --> 15:45.110]  Watch a TV commercial of Martin Cooper.
[15:45.330 --> 15:46.290]  I invented the cell phone.
[15:50.290 --> 15:53.470]  So, the I word is just as bad as the F word in computer history.
[15:56.290 --> 15:56.830]  Let's see.
[15:56.950 --> 15:58.010]  What's next on my list here?
[15:58.370 --> 15:59.810]  I've got a note-taking app for that.
[16:04.490 --> 16:10.190]  I want to talk about current topics in computer history because it's not what you may think.
[16:11.790 --> 16:21.090]  There's been a lot of talk, a lot of action, the last maybe four or five years about replicas and reproductions of famous computers.
[16:21.610 --> 16:37.750]  Now, since I run a museum and I, you know, we prefer the real thing, but there's amazing replica kits out there that you can buy for computers that you can't normally get, like the Apple One and some of the earlier mid-70s computers like Selby and Altair and that sort of thing.
[16:38.090 --> 16:42.210]  Even more common things like Sinclair's and Commodore's, there's replicas out there now.
[16:42.390 --> 16:43.050]  Pretty neat stuff.
[16:44.330 --> 16:46.290]  And that seems to be kind of a booming field.
[16:46.530 --> 16:54.690]  There's also a booming field within our field of people who are making brand new retro computers.
[16:55.370 --> 17:01.550]  People are making single-board computers and things running, you know, running on Z80s and that kind of thing.
[17:02.190 --> 17:04.070]  There's been a bunch of people...
[17:04.070 --> 17:07.730]  Have anyone in the room heard of the Monster 6502?
[17:08.650 --> 17:09.110]  No?
[17:10.530 --> 17:12.110]  Who knows what a 6502 is?
[17:14.850 --> 17:15.330]  Eh?
[17:15.690 --> 17:15.850]  Okay.
[17:16.090 --> 17:16.710]  Thank you.
[17:17.330 --> 17:19.730]  Only the most famous computer chip like ever.
[17:21.890 --> 17:26.770]  The 6502 from Lost Technology powered the Apple II series, the Commodore 64 series.
[17:27.650 --> 17:29.530]  I forget if it was the Atari 800 or not.
[17:30.570 --> 17:31.190]  What's that?
[17:32.350 --> 17:33.470]  Yeah, the Atari 800.
[17:33.870 --> 17:41.490]  And on Futurama, the guy who did the cartoon was an assembly language programmer in his younger years on a Commodore or whatever.
[17:41.490 --> 17:44.990]  So on Futurama, there's an episode where they showed Bender's brain and it says 6502 on it.
[17:46.010 --> 17:47.150]  So, it's a funny episode.
[17:48.670 --> 17:49.690]  What was I saying?
[17:50.570 --> 17:50.930]  Monster.
[17:51.050 --> 17:55.690]  So yeah, some guy just a few months ago was on Maker Faire in San Francisco on Slashdot and whatever else.
[17:55.690 --> 17:59.990]  He made an entire 6502 chip out of transistors.
[18:00.910 --> 18:01.970]  It's insane.
[18:02.190 --> 18:04.750]  And he calls it the Monster 6502.
[18:04.970 --> 18:05.430]  It's pretty awesome.
[18:05.990 --> 18:07.570]  So there's a bunch of people doing that now.
[18:07.710 --> 18:15.770]  People making new computers using historic components and techniques and parts from the 70s and 80s.
[18:15.850 --> 18:16.230]  It's pretty cool.
[18:16.230 --> 18:20.540]  So, let's see.
[18:20.660 --> 18:22.060]  What's next on my list here?
[18:28.680 --> 18:32.520]  I'm interested in talking a little bit, and I'll get into a little research after this.
[18:34.140 --> 18:37.180]  I'm interested in just mentioning what's worth collecting today.
[18:40.000 --> 18:46.620]  I can't tell you how many people I meet who got rid of stuff from the 60s and 70s because it was just obsolete.
[18:47.320 --> 18:49.780]  And they got rid of it to fund new things or this thing or no one cared anymore.
[18:50.280 --> 18:56.240]  And now, 20, 30 years later, they're kicking themselves because they had things that were extremely valuable to those of us who are collectors.
[18:58.020 --> 19:08.380]  So, what you should keep today that may be valuable down the road, like, first-generation iPods are already going for a pretty penny on eBay.
[19:10.180 --> 19:14.720]  Say, like, a Trio or something, some of the early smartphones, the IBM Simon, certainly.
[19:17.000 --> 19:18.360]  Maybe the first iPad.
[19:19.320 --> 19:26.080]  And also things that aren't really computers but have computers in them, any of these Internet of Things sort of devices.
[19:26.900 --> 19:37.240]  Like web TV or any sort of appliances, like small appliances that are computerized, Game Boys, that kind of thing.
[19:37.940 --> 19:45.480]  That kind of thing, in good condition, is not worth much now, but it will be in 10, 20 years.
[19:48.120 --> 19:51.020]  Also, documentation, any famous books.
[19:52.540 --> 19:55.600]  Can anyone give me a hand if I say I know what K&R is?
[19:56.240 --> 19:57.120]  Do you guys know what K&R?
[19:57.660 --> 19:57.940]  All right?
[19:58.300 --> 19:58.960]  Good, good, got it.
[19:59.520 --> 20:03.420]  So, first edition of K&R is a nice, valuable book today.
[20:06.100 --> 20:13.400]  So, when these things come up today, think about, you might want to keep this in good condition, because it might be worth something tomorrow.
[20:13.500 --> 20:14.740]  Not just worth something monetarily.
[20:14.740 --> 20:15.420]  I don't mean that.
[20:15.540 --> 20:17.060]  I mean, no one's in this for money.
[20:17.720 --> 20:19.960]  It might be worth something culturally.
[20:21.420 --> 20:25.240]  I mean, there are some computers that are extremely valuable money-wise.
[20:25.620 --> 20:30.500]  By the way, there's every five, six months, you hear about an Apple One up for auction.
[20:31.100 --> 20:35.440]  There's one being auctioned right now by a group called Charity Buzz.
[20:35.440 --> 20:43.220]  It's called the Celebration Apple One, because it may have been the first Apple One.
[20:43.360 --> 20:44.020]  May have been.
[20:44.820 --> 20:49.640]  It was not made on the production boards.
[20:49.640 --> 20:53.320]  It wasn't a breadboard, but it was made on like a one-off board.
[20:53.960 --> 20:59.100]  And we have reason to believe it might have been one of the very, very first of the 200 Apple Ones ever made.
[20:59.600 --> 21:03.580]  And they're talking about this could be the first one to go over seven figures, which is insane.
[21:05.860 --> 21:06.620]  Insane in a good way.
[21:09.180 --> 21:14.100]  So, I'm going to talk about my book a little bit, because I think maybe there's some lessons to learn there, back to what I was supposed to talk about.
[21:15.100 --> 21:17.160]  So, I wrote this book, Abacus to Smartphone.
[21:18.360 --> 21:23.180]  I subtitled it The Evolution of Mobile Computing, not The History of.
[21:25.260 --> 21:31.660]  Because I was already, even before it was published, I was getting emails from readers saying, well, you know, will I mention this computer?
[21:31.760 --> 21:32.400]  Will I mention that computer?
[21:32.500 --> 21:34.940]  Like, I didn't want to write a coffee table book.
[21:35.020 --> 21:36.100]  I didn't want to write an encyclopedia.
[21:36.940 --> 21:39.240]  And yet, sure enough, after it came out, I got all these emails.
[21:39.360 --> 21:40.900]  Well, how come you didn't mention the HP 95?
[21:41.120 --> 21:44.060]  And just because I didn't mention your computer doesn't mean the book's wrong, you know?
[21:45.000 --> 21:50.220]  So, the book is about the evolution of mobile computing from the Abacus to the smartphone.
[21:50.740 --> 21:53.020]  Because, as I said earlier, everything is built on everything else.
[21:57.100 --> 22:08.780]  Beside the Abacus, there were not computers, but there were all sorts of interesting computing or calculating aids that were specifically designed to be taken with you.
[22:09.140 --> 22:11.560]  Oh, and by the way, so, people say, what's a mobile computer?
[22:11.880 --> 22:14.540]  Anything's mobile if you try hard enough, right?
[22:15.740 --> 22:22.400]  But, I limited my topic to things that were expressly designed, first and foremost, to be taken around with you.
[22:22.660 --> 22:23.960]  Not just could be.
[22:28.920 --> 22:32.260]  So, in prehistoric times, I mean, anyone ever heard of a quipu?
[22:32.960 --> 22:33.480]  No?
[22:33.700 --> 22:37.380]  It's transliterated as Q-U-I-P-U or K-U-I-P-U.
[22:38.340 --> 22:41.480]  It was this device that the ancient Inca people had.
[22:41.480 --> 22:45.120]  It was a series of ropes and knots in different colors.
[22:46.880 --> 22:53.480]  And archaeologists and historians and sociologists and neologists you want to name, they found hundreds of quipus.
[22:53.600 --> 22:55.040]  You can go on eBay and buy a quipu.
[22:56.020 --> 23:01.340]  But it was only within the last year or so that anyone was able to figure out how to read one.
[23:02.060 --> 23:04.100]  And, basically, it was a spreadsheet.
[23:04.100 --> 23:10.020]  People use these quipus and the Inca people to document stuff.
[23:10.300 --> 23:13.100]  Which is fascinating because the Inca had no written language.
[23:14.420 --> 23:16.120]  So, the quipu was sort of like...
[23:16.120 --> 23:22.300]  When it was just a rope, just a bunch of ropes, they would just fold it up and stick it in their satchel or whatever and take it with them.
[23:22.680 --> 23:31.680]  So, it's sort of an example of a computing device, an information processing device expressly built to go with you.
[23:32.600 --> 23:37.580]  And, of course, the slide rule and the sundial and things like that.
[23:37.880 --> 23:39.340]  All sorts of mathematical tools.
[23:41.840 --> 23:47.920]  The place where I had the most fun doing research was in the 1950s and 60s.
[23:50.080 --> 23:52.040]  You guys are going to shout out the answer to this one.
[23:53.520 --> 23:57.020]  What does anyone think was the beginning of...
[23:57.020 --> 23:58.100]  I'm not going to say first...
[23:58.100 --> 24:02.900]  The beginning of mobile and portable computing in terms of actually electronic general purpose computing.
[24:06.860 --> 24:07.520]  Compact level.
[24:07.780 --> 24:09.160]  Anybody want to say something earlier?
[24:12.690 --> 24:13.130]  51.
[24:13.430 --> 24:13.730]  Okay.
[24:14.190 --> 24:14.630]  So...
[24:16.130 --> 24:16.570]  That's...
[24:16.570 --> 24:19.550]  So, what I mentioned earlier, I was looking at PDAs and I realized...
[24:19.550 --> 24:21.010]  I figured, okay, I should write a book about this.
[24:21.070 --> 24:23.210]  I should write a book about where the PDAs come from.
[24:23.210 --> 24:27.230]  And as I realized, that's one chapter in this bigger history, right?
[24:28.030 --> 24:28.710]  Because...
[24:28.710 --> 24:30.550]  So, there were PDAs.
[24:30.550 --> 24:40.710]  It turns out that even though Apple started using the term PDA in the early 90s, there were handheld pocket computers as early as the late 70s.
[24:41.210 --> 24:47.570]  There's 15 years of products before Apple decided they invented it.
[24:49.910 --> 24:51.930]  And they just, you know, that's really...
[24:51.930 --> 24:56.090]  And some of them even had, you know, handwritten recognition or software you could install.
[24:56.410 --> 24:57.650]  Amazing things were done.
[24:57.830 --> 25:05.710]  As early as 1984, Casio had a calculator, a pocket calculator with like block letter through fingerprints.
[25:06.150 --> 25:09.210]  And it actually came up when Palm was sued by Xerox.
[25:09.210 --> 25:09.770]  It was interesting.
[25:11.350 --> 25:14.250]  But then, of course, you had laptops all through the 80s.
[25:16.050 --> 25:17.530]  Okay, first little bit of research.
[25:18.810 --> 25:20.810]  There's a computer called the Grid Compass.
[25:21.970 --> 25:33.270]  And the Grid Compass, a company called Grid Systems, the computer was called the Compass 1100 or 1101, was a clamshell computer made in 81 by this company in Silicon Valley.
[25:35.890 --> 25:37.550]  And it's the size of a laptop.
[25:37.550 --> 25:38.570]  And it's a clamshell.
[25:38.810 --> 25:40.570]  And you can take it around and use it.
[25:41.070 --> 25:42.650]  It has a nice, great screen.
[25:42.930 --> 25:44.030]  It's made out of magnesium.
[25:44.510 --> 25:45.370]  It's heavy as crap.
[25:46.950 --> 25:48.490]  But you have to plug it in the wall.
[25:48.710 --> 25:49.390]  There's no battery.
[25:51.470 --> 25:57.410]  And the three or four guys who co-invented that computer all did pretty well in their careers.
[25:57.650 --> 25:59.790]  They all got to be known in Silicon Valley.
[26:02.970 --> 26:03.690]  And they've...
[26:03.690 --> 26:06.570]  There's a computer history museum in California, in Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley.
[26:07.450 --> 26:11.850]  And they've just accepted credit that, oh, we invented the laptop.
[26:14.850 --> 26:16.150]  Well, I've called them on it.
[26:16.230 --> 26:17.490]  I said, guys, it didn't have a battery.
[26:17.650 --> 26:18.130]  It's not a laptop.
[26:18.830 --> 26:20.830]  And they said, well, it's a lap-sized computer.
[26:20.970 --> 26:23.390]  And it was made to use, you know, on your lap.
[26:23.630 --> 26:29.210]  And it's a laptop based on the context of the early 80s, when there were things like Osbournes and compact luggables.
[26:30.010 --> 26:33.250]  And I said, yeah, but I don't mean to be a weak historian and reverse apply the rules.
[26:33.270 --> 26:38.830]  But there were other laptops in the early 80s that did not require being deployed into the wall.
[26:39.130 --> 26:40.190]  So what about them?
[26:40.670 --> 26:43.250]  And they said, well, Shorter is a Tandium Model 100 and everything else, 83.
[26:43.610 --> 26:46.950]  But I said, no, there were other things in the early 80s at the same time as the grid in 81.
[26:47.310 --> 26:49.130]  They just weren't famous or successful.
[26:49.850 --> 26:50.930]  So no one knows about them.
[26:51.130 --> 26:52.150]  That doesn't mean they don't count.
[26:52.150 --> 26:55.490]  Just because you're ignorant of it doesn't even count.
[26:58.150 --> 27:06.690]  And the one in particular, so there was a company in the UK called DVW, which was like Dalton viewing a whitehead or something.
[27:07.030 --> 27:08.890]  And it was an engineering boutique.
[27:09.690 --> 27:15.650]  And their customer was Severn Trent, which was a water utility in the UK.
[27:17.290 --> 27:23.830]  And DVW built, you know, a little tiny tablet laptop kind of thing.
[27:24.570 --> 27:28.230]  Runs on batteries and had a basic interpreter built in, general purpose computer.
[27:28.630 --> 27:32.010]  And it came out with, you know, the same year within a month or two of the grid compass.
[27:32.690 --> 27:33.530]  But it had batteries.
[27:34.270 --> 27:36.450]  And I said to them, hey, I'm sorry you didn't know about it.
[27:36.530 --> 27:37.310]  That doesn't mean it didn't exist.
[27:38.630 --> 27:41.070]  In 82 was really the year of the laptop.
[27:41.290 --> 27:54.050]  In 82 you had Casio, Epson, Grundy, Xerox, and several others, maybe about seven or eight companies in 82, all sort of spontaneously made battery powered laptops.
[27:54.730 --> 28:00.850]  And it wasn't until 83 or so that anyone heard of them because of Tandy.
[28:01.490 --> 28:09.110]  Oh, by the way, the Tandy Model 100 in 83, just a piece of trivia, was the last product that Bill Gates personally wrote code for.
[28:10.650 --> 28:16.210]  It wasn't until 84 when clamshell battery powered laptops became popular.
[28:16.510 --> 28:19.570]  So the grid people to this day said, well, we had a clamshell product in 83.
[28:20.030 --> 28:21.950]  But it's not a laptop without a battery.
[28:22.110 --> 28:22.450]  I'm sorry.
[28:22.650 --> 28:23.370]  It's interesting.
[28:23.710 --> 28:26.990]  They mean that they pioneered, but I wouldn't, I don't think it's fair to call it a laptop.
[28:31.340 --> 28:33.380]  And then somebody, you know, they mentioned the Compact.
[28:33.560 --> 28:40.260]  So these soup, these 25 pounds suitcase computers, you had to plug them in, but they were, you know, desktop replacements.
[28:40.420 --> 28:41.160]  They weren't laptops.
[28:43.020 --> 28:44.520]  Osborne is the most famous one.
[28:45.080 --> 28:45.440]  Compact.
[28:45.600 --> 28:46.480]  IBM had one.
[28:46.620 --> 28:47.920]  Even Commodore had one.
[28:48.450 --> 28:49.620]  Kaypro and many others.
[28:52.100 --> 28:55.400]  Osborne, again, is generally, generally credited.
[28:55.700 --> 28:56.580]  Oh, they were the first one.
[28:56.580 --> 28:59.120]  No, they were the first one that was a big popular success.
[29:00.780 --> 29:06.540]  There were four or five examples from the mid 70s and late 70s that were the same thing.
[29:06.800 --> 29:08.260]  They just, no one heard of them.
[29:10.620 --> 29:15.100]  But I've documented a lot of those in my book and they deserve, they deserve their place in history, right?
[29:16.320 --> 29:22.900]  In fact, Adam Osborne, so one of the companies was called GM Research, nothing to do with GM, the motor car, the motor company.
[29:24.320 --> 29:32.820]  And they were, had a booth showing their laptop that was, no one ever bought, at one of the computer trade shows in California in the late 70s, early 80s.
[29:33.500 --> 29:40.080]  And the owner of that company I interviewed showed me, he actually kept all these years, the sign in logs from his trade show booth.
[29:40.660 --> 29:42.200]  Adam Osborne saw that computer.
[29:43.420 --> 29:51.800]  So Adam Osborne, when he became famous for the Osborne computer, spent years telling journalists he thought of this idea one day and he was so brilliant and blah, blah, blah.
[29:52.380 --> 29:53.200]  That's not true.
[29:58.460 --> 30:05.200]  So, the handheld computers have a prehistory before they got famous, the laptops, the suitcase computers, all these prehistories.
[30:06.020 --> 30:08.100]  And then it got really interesting research.
[30:08.340 --> 30:13.420]  And by the way, so, it was in 2002 or so when I said, oh, I'll write a book about, you know, PDAs.
[30:14.440 --> 30:16.940]  It was in 2015 where I actually published a book.
[30:17.120 --> 30:20.040]  Because every time I thought I was done, the story got bigger.
[30:21.120 --> 30:25.660]  So, I got back to five, ten years of prehistory before Osborne.
[30:26.460 --> 30:32.520]  And I said, well, you know, were there any such thing as portable computers before 25-pound suitcase machines?
[30:34.560 --> 30:37.280]  And it turned out, there were.
[30:39.000 --> 30:43.600]  In the 60s, there were lots of...
[30:43.600 --> 30:58.040]  there were, you know, a decent amount of computers available in the 60s that were 50 pounds, 100 pounds, things that were just basically desk on wheels at that point, things that had handles that came in these big metal cases for one man to carry on each side in the field,
[30:58.740 --> 31:03.440]  whether the field was a military zone or an oil, you know, oil field or whatever else.
[31:05.480 --> 31:08.340]  And again, these were portable for the context of their times.
[31:08.340 --> 31:09.980]  So, they were even advertised as portable.
[31:10.880 --> 31:18.940]  I should have brought with me, but I had an advertisement from 1958 from a company called Oidonetics, a computer called the Recomp.
[31:19.320 --> 31:21.560]  And it shows two men wearing hard hats.
[31:21.820 --> 31:24.100]  And it says, like, so, you know, you could take it with you.
[31:24.280 --> 31:26.480]  So portable, you know, carryable by two men.
[31:28.160 --> 31:30.300]  But the idea that you could have a computer in the field was interesting.
[31:31.060 --> 31:34.960]  The most interesting part is two little stories.
[31:36.520 --> 31:39.340]  Anyone know who John Malkley is?
[31:40.720 --> 31:44.820]  John Malkley is the guy who basically was the head designer of ENIAC.
[31:46.700 --> 31:48.340]  Malkley was kind of a one-hit wonder.
[31:48.660 --> 31:52.340]  He did ENIAC and, of course, UNIVAC, and then he kind of faded away.
[31:52.880 --> 31:57.300]  He had a consulting company in the late 50s called Malkley Associates.
[31:57.560 --> 32:03.180]  And his business plan was to sell, like, construction project management software.
[32:03.940 --> 32:12.080]  And the catch-22 he had was that companies would buy their first computer, a mainframe, to run this application.
[32:14.540 --> 32:18.180]  But if he wanted to sell the product, well, they didn't have a computer.
[32:18.300 --> 32:19.940]  So how could he show them what it could do?
[32:21.220 --> 32:26.720]  So he built a suitcase-size analog computer in a suitcase.
[32:27.420 --> 32:36.880]  He did this as a trainer just to show people the idea of project management, to show people how the idea of changing one variable in a computing environment could affect another variable.
[32:37.540 --> 32:40.260]  And he took it with them on planes and everything else to show customers.
[32:42.080 --> 32:44.780]  He was being interviewed by Time Magazine in 1958.
[32:45.920 --> 32:49.300]  And they said, okay, well, you did something famous 10 years, 15 years prior.
[32:49.660 --> 32:51.040]  You know, what's the next big thing?
[32:51.660 --> 32:53.020]  And he said, I'm happy you asked that.
[32:53.140 --> 32:55.560]  The next big thing is mobile computing.
[32:56.680 --> 32:58.960]  And he showed them this suitcase-sized thing he built.
[33:00.480 --> 33:01.360]  I don't know...
[33:01.360 --> 33:02.580]  Now, he was a bit of a prankster.
[33:03.180 --> 33:04.640]  You know, Wozniak would have liked him.
[33:04.700 --> 33:05.440]  You guys would have liked him.
[33:06.180 --> 33:12.660]  I don't know if he was pranking them, or if they were being gullible, or if they took him a little too seriously.
[33:13.460 --> 33:19.920]  But Time Magazine, in November of 1958, wrote that Mr. Mowgli is already working on a pocket computer.
[33:21.520 --> 33:23.860]  He was doing no such thing in 1958.
[33:24.300 --> 33:28.980]  But they described in the article, and this is, don't kill the messenger, and it's very chauvinistic.
[33:29.940 --> 33:43.040]  They said, a woman will go to the market with this pocket terminal, you know, and she'll stick her pocket terminal in an interface, and the food will come right out into her cart, and she will bring home the electronic bacon.
[33:43.780 --> 33:45.140]  That's their words, not mine.
[33:47.740 --> 33:53.320]  So, but there was another company called Donner Scientific in the late 50s that had a...
[33:53.320 --> 33:54.920]  Oh, I forgot to mention one very important part of the story.
[33:55.100 --> 33:57.580]  The Mowgli computer was a one-off prototype.
[33:58.580 --> 34:01.140]  I've looked through his personal archives at the University of Pennsylvania.
[34:01.760 --> 34:03.780]  There are patents.
[34:04.120 --> 34:05.560]  There is a bill of materials.
[34:05.960 --> 34:07.400]  There is marketing literature.
[34:07.800 --> 34:09.910]  There is letters of interest from customers.
[34:10.460 --> 34:12.060]  There are engineering drawings.
[34:12.060 --> 34:16.930]  There is everything you would need to have a product except any evidence that they actually made the product.
[34:17.960 --> 34:19.660]  Basically, it was vaporware.
[34:21.020 --> 34:26.520]  Donner Scientific, another company in the early 50s, made almost the identical product, but they actually produced and sold it.
[34:27.280 --> 34:33.620]  I've interviewed those guys as well, and they readily admit that they thought that was the pinnacle of mobile computing.
[34:33.920 --> 34:35.600]  They never dreamed it would get any smaller.
[34:35.600 --> 34:44.240]  Whereas, Mr. Mowgli, you know, never built it, but I've got plenty of evidence to show that he did dream of much better things, including the fact that he fooled Time Magazine.
[34:48.080 --> 34:59.920]  And then it turns out that throughout the 50s, the Army and some corporations were taking mainframes and putting them in tractor trailers.
[34:59.920 --> 35:01.100]  This is the microphone?
[35:01.500 --> 35:02.940]  It just seems flaky now.
[35:03.340 --> 35:03.980]  I don't know.
[35:07.060 --> 35:08.140]  The Army...
[35:08.740 --> 35:22.300]  There was a place called Camp Evans, which was a top-secret Signal Corps research lab, kind of America's Bletchley Park, which is on the Jersey Shore, which, by the way, is the facility that now is our museum.
[35:23.360 --> 35:29.260]  Anyway, they had a Burroughs vacuum tube computer in the mid-50s.
[35:29.720 --> 35:32.380]  They wanted one of those newfangled transistor computers.
[35:32.820 --> 35:34.720]  The choices were IBM and Univac.
[35:35.300 --> 35:38.580]  The IBM cost too much, even for this Army department at the time.
[35:39.240 --> 35:40.960]  And Univac couldn't deliver fast enough.
[35:41.820 --> 35:45.600]  So they thought, well, you know, we're one of the top three or four computer labs in the world.
[35:45.820 --> 35:46.600]  We'll build one.
[35:46.820 --> 35:48.080]  How hard can it possibly be?
[35:50.380 --> 35:54.580]  And the Army said, we'll give you money for a computer, but it has to be for field technology.
[35:55.520 --> 35:58.140]  So they said, we'll put it in a truck, we'll call it field technology.
[35:58.620 --> 36:00.360]  We'll get here, take the wheels off, we'll have our own computer.
[36:02.560 --> 36:03.200]  And they did.
[36:03.960 --> 36:08.160]  They built a computer that spanned two 30-foot tractor trailers.
[36:08.840 --> 36:11.180]  One for air conditioning and power, one for computing.
[36:11.700 --> 36:12.940]  Full general purpose computer.
[36:13.760 --> 36:18.280]  And being good engineers, I mean, they were Army first, but they were engineers just like you and me.
[36:18.820 --> 36:22.840]  And they called it Moby Dick, which was mobile digital computer.
[36:23.320 --> 36:24.560]  Moby Dick, big as a whale.
[36:25.700 --> 36:27.760]  They designed it here in New Jersey.
[36:28.280 --> 36:30.960]  It was manufactured by Sylvania in Massachusetts.
[36:31.000 --> 36:33.180]  They made six of them for the Army.
[36:33.740 --> 36:36.700]  Sylvania actually had a computer called the 9400, which is a commercial version.
[36:36.900 --> 36:38.080]  They sold two of them.
[36:38.780 --> 36:41.340]  The commercial version ran a two megahertz instead of one.
[36:43.720 --> 36:46.900]  And Moby Dick was an actual, honest to gosh, produced computer.
[36:48.620 --> 36:53.240]  And it was the first computer the Army used that wasn't just used for military purposes.
[36:54.000 --> 36:56.060]  It was used for inventory and stuff.
[36:56.380 --> 37:00.580]  But they also used it for, well, they wanted to use it for command and control in the field.
[37:01.320 --> 37:03.240]  Things that weren't really feasible until the 80s.
[37:03.240 --> 37:05.280]  But that was the assignment.
[37:05.420 --> 37:09.420]  That was the mission of the guys who developed it, was to develop future technologies, which they did.
[37:09.560 --> 37:11.140]  It was just a little bit big for this time.
[37:14.560 --> 37:17.180]  And on the heels of that, there were smaller versions.
[37:17.800 --> 37:23.760]  There was one done by Philco called Basic Pack, which was, say, the size of, you know, like a box truck.
[37:24.900 --> 37:30.800]  There was one done by IBM called Compaq, P-A-C, not P-I-Q, which was 100 pounds in the back of a Jeep.
[37:32.560 --> 37:42.900]  The Army itself, working with a lot of companies, came up with something called MicroModule, which was like a Lego-like modular way to build electronics.
[37:43.960 --> 37:48.880]  And they had this computer they called MicroPack, which was under 100 pounds.
[37:49.200 --> 37:51.820]  A mini-computer before DEC came up with the term.
[37:53.420 --> 37:59.420]  And so all these computers were compatible with something called field data.
[37:59.840 --> 38:02.960]  So field data was a way for computers of different makes and models.
[38:03.280 --> 38:07.860]  Field data was a code invented by the Army to computers of different makes and models to talk together.
[38:08.300 --> 38:14.220]  Before field data, other than teletype code, only computers of the same make and model could communicate.
[38:15.080 --> 38:16.780]  And field data became ASCII.
[38:17.720 --> 38:21.260]  Now, if I go up to any of you, you can tell me what ASCII stands for, right?
[38:21.360 --> 38:22.420]  Anyone knows what it stands for?
[38:22.780 --> 38:24.580]  American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
[38:25.040 --> 38:27.300]  But what it stands for doesn't always convey...
[38:27.300 --> 38:30.400]  Well, learning what something stands for doesn't always teach you what it means.
[38:31.020 --> 38:37.740]  And the reason it was called the American Code for Information Interchange was it was exactly that, developed by this Army thing.
[38:38.460 --> 38:41.360]  It makes more sense when you realize why the term came about.
[38:44.060 --> 38:46.920]  So there were these three or four tractor trailer computers.
[38:49.060 --> 39:09.560]  And then it turns out before that, as early as 1953 versus 56, 57, the Bureau of Standards, which is now NIST, down in DC, had a computer they called DYSEAC, D-Y-S-E-A-C, DYSEAC, which meant the second... the diamond second because it was already a computer called SEAC,
[39:09.700 --> 39:11.840]  but that was just a standard 1950s mainframe.
[39:12.540 --> 39:14.120]  DYSEAC meant the second SEAC.
[39:14.720 --> 39:17.160]  SEAC was Standard's Eastern Automatic Computer.
[39:17.320 --> 39:19.440]  It was also SWAC, Standard's Western Automatic Computer.
[39:22.280 --> 39:23.160]  DYSEAC was...
[39:23.840 --> 39:25.640]  I'm going to say first, I'm going to be a hypocrite.
[39:25.880 --> 39:27.960]  The first computer to use printed circuits.
[39:29.320 --> 39:30.480]  It was in two...
[39:30.480 --> 39:32.460]  Now, keeping in mind, Moby Dick was in two 30-foot trailers.
[39:33.000 --> 39:34.780]  DYSEAC was in two 40-foot trailers.
[39:35.720 --> 39:39.340]  And the customer was a signal core out in White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico.
[39:40.200 --> 39:46.240]  But the new printed circuits were so primitive that basically the white sand got in them, and that was that.
[39:46.960 --> 39:48.060]  The computer worked.
[39:48.140 --> 39:50.800]  There were some interesting test applications, but there was only one ever made.
[39:50.800 --> 39:52.100]  It was a prototype, basically.
[39:52.860 --> 39:57.720]  Whereas Moby Dick was, you know, arguably the earliest produced mobile computer.
[39:59.880 --> 40:01.720]  Oh, and this, by the way, a fun Moby Dick story.
[40:02.160 --> 40:12.500]  They took it on two laps of the test track, because it was a new army vehicle, down at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, and both laps the computer came through with flying colors, and both laps the truck broke down.
[40:14.460 --> 40:15.920]  I can't make this stuff up.
[40:20.220 --> 40:25.800]  So those are just some research fun projects I had while I was doing 12 years of writing this book.
[40:28.380 --> 40:36.760]  And I think what I'd like to do now is, I could talk about research until I'm blue in the face, but what I'd like to do is a little bit of ask me anything.
[40:37.180 --> 40:41.740]  I've said I spent 18 years as a technology journalist, and a dozen years as a computer historian.
[40:42.560 --> 40:46.700]  So ask me anything about computer history, or research, or whatever else.
[40:50.580 --> 40:51.560]  Ah, bright light.
[40:51.720 --> 40:54.220]  There's microphones up here and stuff, or just shout.
[40:55.460 --> 40:57.420]  Somebody asked something so I could justify my existence.
[41:04.420 --> 41:04.860]  Please?
[41:05.140 --> 41:06.260]  Oh, here's somebody coming up.
[41:06.380 --> 41:06.540]  Okay.
[41:07.260 --> 41:07.700]  Okay.
[41:12.890 --> 41:13.890]  So, very interesting talk.
[41:14.010 --> 41:14.270]  Thank you.
[41:14.830 --> 41:15.030]  Thank you.
[41:16.090 --> 41:18.630]  You talked a lot about the hardware history of computing.
[41:18.810 --> 41:23.870]  Have you done much on, like, symbolic or, like, software history, things like that?
[41:24.230 --> 41:26.170]  And if so, what are some of the interesting topics there?
[41:27.010 --> 41:32.070]  I haven't personally done software research, but I can dispel a few myths for you.
[41:33.230 --> 41:37.430]  For example, on the mezzanine level where my group is a booth, we're showing basic.
[41:37.850 --> 41:39.250]  Good old textual basic.
[41:42.650 --> 41:54.390]  And basic became famous in 1975 when a Harvard sophomore named Little Billy Gates and Paul Allen bought an Altair.
[41:54.850 --> 41:59.130]  And built it and realized the software, you know, using assembly was hard.
[41:59.810 --> 42:01.090]  And so they did basic.
[42:01.370 --> 42:03.270]  But they ported basic.
[42:03.750 --> 42:05.710]  Basic was invented at Dartmouth in 1965.
[42:07.770 --> 42:13.850]  And, of course, what happened with basic, when Microsoft got its hands on it, was that they tried selling it for the Altair.
[42:14.010 --> 42:15.090]  But it was on paper tape.
[42:15.470 --> 42:16.770]  Some people just copied it.
[42:20.230 --> 42:25.090]  And when I was a kid, my mom used to tell me, Evan, sometimes it's not what you say that offends people.
[42:25.090 --> 42:25.910]  It's how you say it.
[42:28.070 --> 42:29.870]  Gates was born a millionaire.
[42:32.310 --> 42:37.510]  And he wrote a letter, a very famous letter in computer history called An Open Letter to Hobbyists in 1976.
[42:38.130 --> 42:39.790]  And he said, you're all crooks.
[42:39.790 --> 42:41.050]  You stole my program.
[42:41.110 --> 42:41.810]  You have to pay me.
[42:41.950 --> 42:42.790]  You can't just copy it.
[42:43.350 --> 42:49.090]  And he wrote this six, seven hundred word, long letter, ranting and rambling about you're all a bunch of thieves.
[42:49.250 --> 42:50.310]  Don't you always suffer as hard.
[42:50.450 --> 42:51.510]  It's just as valid as hardware.
[42:51.910 --> 42:53.030]  You know, just as hard to do as hardware.
[42:53.230 --> 42:55.470]  And he's right about that part.
[42:56.790 --> 43:00.750]  If he had said, guys, you know, I'd really appreciate it if you not just copy it.
[43:01.450 --> 43:03.130]  People might have, you know, okay, fine.
[43:03.330 --> 43:03.410]  Thanks.
[43:03.550 --> 43:04.910]  Because Bill Gates did something awesome.
[43:05.450 --> 43:06.110]  Don't get me wrong.
[43:06.230 --> 43:07.750]  Bill Gates did something awesome and useful.
[43:08.430 --> 43:10.070]  And then he was a little jerk about it.
[43:11.930 --> 43:13.850]  And that was the start of the downfall.
[43:13.970 --> 43:16.710]  I mean, at first, everyone loved Bill Gates in the hobbyist circles.
[43:16.910 --> 43:18.570]  He did something great and really cool.
[43:19.710 --> 43:21.470]  And then his reputation quickly went downhill.
[43:23.330 --> 43:26.650]  But it's important to realize what Gates and Paul Allen did.
[43:26.970 --> 43:27.950]  It's still cool.
[43:28.050 --> 43:28.710]  No less cool.
[43:28.930 --> 43:30.350]  But they ported to BASIC.
[43:30.470 --> 43:31.750]  They didn't make BASIC.
[43:33.850 --> 43:36.470]  She pointed out earlier to remind me about the mother of all demos.
[43:37.490 --> 43:52.290]  1968, Doug Engelbart, better known as the father of the mouse, gave the mother of all demos in Silicon Valley, I believe at Stanford, where they showed off a graphical operating environment with everything working together in a mouse and a pointer.
[43:52.610 --> 43:59.030]  And no one had ever seen anything like this, let alone a room full of the top 200 engineers in Silicon Valley.
[44:00.050 --> 44:00.890]  It's on YouTube.
[44:01.130 --> 44:02.270]  You can watch the mother of all demos.
[44:02.430 --> 44:02.790]  It's incredible.
[44:04.510 --> 44:12.230]  Mr. Engelbart and his team at Stanford Research Institute, important to emphasize, and his team, came up with the mouse.
[44:13.610 --> 44:22.890]  It was Xerox Park Palo, the research center, a little while later in the 70s, who did a much better version of the GUI.
[44:23.630 --> 44:26.150]  And then it was Apple that got the rights to it.
[44:26.610 --> 44:33.790]  And the famous software story goes that one day, Steve Jobs screened to Bill Gates and said, you stole this from us.
[44:34.350 --> 44:36.650]  And Bill Gates said, Steve, you just stole it first.
[44:38.350 --> 44:40.450]  Again, I am loathe to defend Bill Gates.
[44:42.690 --> 44:46.510]  Another, I mean, the ASCII, the field data I mentioned earlier was certainly software as well.
[44:47.470 --> 44:49.990]  So there are plenty of software archeology to be done.
[44:50.610 --> 44:53.650]  And one more bit of a non-commercial plug.
[44:54.030 --> 44:58.250]  I mentioned that my organization, the Vintage Computer Federation, we do national events of our own.
[44:58.510 --> 45:05.470]  Our next major event is called the Vintage Computer Festival West, which will be August 6th and 7th at the Computer Museum in Silicon Valley.
[45:05.990 --> 45:10.270]  And our keynote speaker is going to be Bob Zeidman, Z-E-I-D man.
[45:10.530 --> 45:13.590]  And he's going to talk about CPM versus DOS.
[45:15.250 --> 45:22.730]  Back in 2012, he did research about whether or not Microsoft knowingly had CPM code in DOS, and concluded they did not.
[45:23.930 --> 45:25.850]  But there were two interesting things back then.
[45:26.330 --> 45:34.790]  One was Bob Zeidman at the time was working for Microsoft as an outside expert on a patent case, so he would have taken money from them at the time.
[45:35.450 --> 45:38.530]  Also, he did not at the time have a DOS source.
[45:38.670 --> 45:39.690]  He had to disassemble it.
[45:40.350 --> 45:47.170]  Well, he no longer works for Microsoft, and a year or two ago, Microsoft released the DOS source.
[45:48.110 --> 45:50.150]  So the earlier MS-DOS source.
[45:50.330 --> 45:55.510]  So now he can do a much better analysis, and he's going to reveal his new findings in a couple of weeks.
[45:55.850 --> 45:56.890]  So that might be really interesting.
[45:57.270 --> 46:03.070]  Did Microsoft knowingly have any CPM code in DOS back in 1970...
[46:03.770 --> 46:04.290]  1981?
[46:08.920 --> 46:09.860]  Any other questions?
[46:10.760 --> 46:11.500]  Oh, yes?
[46:11.620 --> 46:11.880]  Back there?
[46:13.180 --> 46:16.440]  And I'm sorry again for not really talking about what was promised.
[46:17.240 --> 46:17.880]  Hey, Evan.
[46:18.160 --> 46:19.020]  Thanks for the talk.
[46:19.300 --> 46:19.340]  Thank you.
[46:19.340 --> 46:19.960]  It's interesting stuff.
[46:21.180 --> 46:22.100]  Can you...
[46:22.100 --> 46:31.400]  Following on the question of software, I guess, coming further back, what's known about the bootstrap process of these early machines?
[46:31.400 --> 46:34.540]  Was there an OS of any sort?
[46:34.680 --> 46:35.660]  Were there monitor...
[46:35.660 --> 46:36.800]  simple monitor programs?
[46:37.000 --> 46:37.720]  Literally machines.
[46:38.880 --> 46:43.100]  Like the burrows and the truck mounted, all that 50s era stuff.
[46:43.380 --> 46:46.220]  The boot process for those was turn them on and load paper tape.
[46:46.380 --> 46:46.660]  Okay.
[46:47.140 --> 46:47.240]  Yeah.
[46:48.340 --> 46:52.220]  Whereas if you talk about an S100 machine, it's turn it on and flip a lot of switches for a half hour.
[46:52.660 --> 46:53.440]  Am I out of time?
[46:54.080 --> 46:54.460]  Okay.
[46:54.540 --> 46:55.500]  I just want to say one quick thing.
[46:55.780 --> 46:57.080]  Bob Frankston, are you in the room?
[46:58.620 --> 46:59.020]  No?
[46:59.380 --> 46:59.780]  Okay.
[46:59.980 --> 47:00.320]  Never mind.
[47:01.320 --> 47:02.160]  I'll shut up now.
[47:04.580 --> 47:05.540]  That gets applause.
[47:05.860 --> 47:06.320]  Thank you, sir.