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An Awesome List of computer history videos, documentaries and related folklore

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[ Daily / Weekly / Overview ]

Sep 30, 2018

Videos / Movies

• Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017) - Set in the 1980s, this series dramatizes the personal computing boom ^8.4/10

Source Code / Announcements and Memos

• MS-DOS (⭐17k) (1982, 1983) - Version 1.25 and 2.0

Sep 24, 2018

Videos / Old recordings

• The Computer Literacy Project (1980-1989) - In the 1980s, the BBC explored the world of computing in The Computer Literacy Project (all episodes)

• Thinking Allowed - Artificial Intelligence (1989) - Interview with John McCarthy, creator of Lisp and one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence

Videos / Documentaries

• Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age (1984) - Documentary about a 1984 hacker conference ^7.6/10

• The KGB, the Computer, and Me (1990) - With computer scientist Clifford Stoll ^8.0/10

• Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996) - History of the personal computer ^8.5/10

• Code Rush (2000) - The story of Netscape and the birth of Mozilla ^7.3/10

• The Code (2001) - The Histroy of Linux & FOSS ^7.5/10

• Revolution OS (2001) - The story of GNU/linux and Open Source Movement ^7.3/10

• The Secret History Of Hacking (2001) - History of early hackers ^7.6/10

• BBS The Documentary (2005) - History of the Bulletin Board System ^8.5/10

• Hackers Are People Too (2008) - Documentary about what hackers are ^6.0/10

• Something Ventured (2011) - The history of early venture capital ^7.0/10

• Code 2600 (2011) - Documents the Info-Tech Age, told by the events and people who helped build and manipulate it ^7.4/10

• We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (2012) - A documentary on the workings and beliefs of the self-described "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous ^7.3/10

• Silicon Valley (2013) - A PBS "American Experience" documentary about the start of Silicon Valley ^7.9/10

• TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard (2013) ^7.6/10

• DEFCON: The Documentary (2013) - Documentary about DEFCON, the biggest hacker conference ^5.8/10

• Downloaded (2013) - The Napster Revolution, a documentary that explores the downloading revolution ^6.9/10

• The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) - The story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz ^8.1/10

• Rise of the Hackers (2014) - Harnessing cryptography to stay a step ahead of cybercriminals ^7.5/10

• Silicon Cowboys (2016) - Documentary detailing the story of Compaq, its three founders and how it took on IBM at the height of its PC dominance. ^6.8/10

Videos / Reflective interviews

• Steve Jobs - The Lost Interview (2012) - A conversation with Steve Jobs as he was running NeXT, the company he had founded after leaving Apple ^8.1/10

Videos / Movies

• Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) - History of Apple and Microsoft ^7.3/10

• Micro Men (2009) - History of Acorn Computers and Sinclair Research ^7.6/10

• The Social Network (2010) - The history of the birth of Facebook ^7.7/10

• Steve Jobs (2015) - The story shows Steve Jobs behind the scenes of Apple's iconic product launches. ^7.2/10

Videos / Commercials

• Apple 1984 Super Bowl Commercial (1984) - Apple 1984 Super Bowl Commercial Introducing Macintosh Computer ^7.8/10

Texts / Folklore

• Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)

• The Jargon File (1988)

• The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1992)

• A Cypherpunk's Manifesto (1993)

• In the Beginning…Was the Command Line (1999)

• UTF-8 history (2003)

May 23, 2018

Texts / Announcements and Memos

• The Internet Tidal Wave (1995) - 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... (1999) - Poul-Henning Kamp coining the term bikeshedding

Source Code / Announcements and Memos

• Adobe Photoshop (1990) - The first version of Adobe Photoshop (written in Pascal)

Apr 10, 2018

Source Code / Announcements and Memos

• Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (⭐54k) (1969) - Original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) source code for the command and lunar modules

Dec 03, 2017

Videos / Old recordings

• Computer Networks - ARPANET (1972) - The developers of the ARPANET talk about their new network:
  • Part 1
  • Part 2

Texts / Folklore

• Unix Recovery Legend (1986)

• How Steve Wozniak Wrote BASIC for the Original Apple From Scratch (2014)

Oct 01, 2017

Videos / Old recordings

• A Computer Animated Hand (1972) - One of the earliest examples of computer animation

Jul 18, 2017

Websites / Announcements and Memos

• First website ever made (1990) - CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research Organisation) website

• The Amazing FishCam (1994) - The Fishcam was the second live camera on the web and is the oldest camera site still in existence

Jul 02, 2017

Source Code / Announcements and Memos

• C compiler (1972) - The earliest known versions of Dennis Ritchie's first C compiler (GitHub code mirror (⭐3.4k))

Jul 01, 2017

Texts / Folklore

• The case of the 500-mile email (2002)

Jun 20, 2017

Videos / Documentaries

• Download: The True Story of the Internet (2008) - A documentary television series about Internet history ^7.8/10
  • Part 1: Browser Wars – The rise and fall of Netscape and its battle against Microsoft
  • Part 2: Search – The rise of Google and Yahoo
  • Part 3: Bubble – The dot-com crash of 2000 and the mainstays of the Internet: Amazon.com and Ebay
  • Part 4: People Power – Peer to peer technology, web 2.0, and social networking

Jun 12, 2017

Audio / Podcasts

• Internet History Podcast (subscribe)

Apr 23, 2017

Texts / Folklore

• The Story of Getting SSH Port 22 (1995)

Mar 31, 2017

Texts / Folklore

• The Story of the PING Program (undated)

Aug 17, 2016

Videos / Old recordings

• KRON San Francisco: Primitive Internet report (1981) - KRON San Francisco news segment on how early home computer users could read their morning newspapers online

• We Are Apple (1984) - Corporate song that was used during the Macintosh rollout in January, 1984

• Steve Jobs: The Crazy Ones (1997) - Steve Jobs talks about The Crazy Ones marketing campaign on internal Apple meeting

Mar 03, 2016

Videos / Old recordings

• Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks (1963)

Feb 28, 2016

Texts / Folklore

• 20 Years — One Standard: The Story of TCP/IP (2003)

Feb 12, 2016

Videos / Talks & Lectures

• Computers From The Inside Out (1985) - Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture. Not about computer history per se, but about how computers work

Feb 11, 2016

Videos / Talks & Lectures

• The Secret History of Silicon Valley (2008) - Talk by Steve Blank at the Computer History Museum

Texts / Folklore

• The Humble Programmer (1972) - Dijkstra's overview of the programming universe as he saw it in 1972

• The Conscience of a Hacker (1986) - The Hacker Manifesto

Feb 10, 2016

Videos / Documentaries

• The Internet: Behind the Web (2000) - Documentary about development of internet from 1950-60's to 21st century.

• The Codebreakers (2006) - Documentary about how poor countries are using free and open source software (FOSS) for development purposes.

Videos / Talks & Lectures

• The Origins of Linux - Linus Torvalds (2001) - Linus Torvalds tells the story of how he went from writing code as a graduate student to become an icon for open source software.

Feb 09, 2016

Videos / Old recordings

• United States Navy Training Media: Basic Mechanisms in Fire Control Computers (1953)

Feb 08, 2016

Videos / Old recordings

• The Computer Chronicles (1983-2002) - All episodes ^8.6/10. A few of the notable episodes are:
  • Simulator Software (1983)
  • Artificial Intelligence (1985)
  • The Internet (1993)

• Net Cafe (1996-2002) - All episodes ^?/10. A few of the notable episodes are:
  • Hackers (1996) - Looks at the hacker culture and their influence on the early growth of the internet
  • Politics on the Web (1996) - Institute for Global Communications, Cyperpunks and Anarchists Press

Feb 07, 2016

Videos / Documentaries

• Birth of BASIC (2014) - Invention of the Basic computer language.

Texts / Folklore

• Epigrams on Programming (1982)

Feb 06, 2016

Videos / Old recordings

• The Mother of All Demos (1968)

• Xerox Parc - Office Alto Commercial (1972)

• The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive (1982)

• The UNIX System: Making Computers Easier to Use (1982)

• Erlang: The Movie (1990)

Videos / Reflective interviews

• The Great 202 Jailbreak (2013) - David Brailsford

• UNIX Special: Profs Kernighan & Brailsford (2015) - David Brailsford interviews Brian Kernighan

Videos / Talks & Lectures

• Crockford on JavaScript - Volume 1: The Early Years (2011) - Not actually about JavaScript, but about early computing history

• Bret Victor - The Future of Programming (2013..ehh 1973) - Humorous talk about the future of programming as seen from 1973

Texts / Folklore

• The Story of Mel (1983)

Texts / Announcements and Memos

• What would you like to see most in minix? (1991) - First public mention of what would later become Linux

Source Code / Announcements and Memos

• UNIX (⭐5.8k) (1972) - Continuous Unix commit history from 1972 until today