I'd ask /g/ for this, but i dont think they know or care. I'm writing a cyberpunk novel(cliche i know) but i need information about the history of computing from 1950-1980. There is a lot of gems here especially pertaining to the aesthetics of machines, and the ideas many futurists had at the time. What i need are resources, so come here to ask /lit/, this seems like an obscure thing one of might follow.
/thread
Dammit I fucked up ignore those posts. Here's the source: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
>>8242923
>>8242928
I read this ages ago. FORTRAN is fun to program in, but i will always stick with C++. On topic, maybe some old magazines from the 1950 on the topic i am asking about?
Read Vonnegut's short story EPICAC. A central part of it is a supercomputer from that era.
>>8242933
>fortran
>fun
c'mon guy you don't need to lie around us
>>8242929
Give them names /lit/ !
Shit, computing from 1950 to 1980 is really going to primarily be the realm of industry/military and university-level research. It wasn't until the Apple II and TRS-80 (1977) that computers began approaching the point where they could be easily obtained by the average Joe and hacker culture could begin forming.
In that period it's primarily going to be large maneframe systems running programs custom built by IBM. Computer terminals will have built-in ash trays. Operators will mainly be young but clean-cut and conservatively dressed men and women, it won't be until the late 70s that you start seeing the "disheveled sysadmin" showing up.
>>8243180
You could pretend Bell Labs had a bunch of secret shit that they never told anyone about.
go straight to the source!
http://textfiles.com/wdirectory.html
Read the history of UNIX. Go to google, type in "history of UNIX" and you will have what you need.
>>8242915
I have a couple of websites for you OP.
Here's old computers. Where the website involves documenting older computers from as early as 1974 with pictures.
http://www.oldcomputers.net/indexwp.html
And lost Levels. An older website that documents unreleased video games.
http://www.lostlevels.org/
And finally awful library books. Two smug women analyze older book set for book trimming from libraries. They don't go into detail with book samples. But you may be able to find them through google.
http://awfullibrarybooks.net/
>>8242915
dude just go to your nearest technology or computing museum and look at what they have. if you're in the uk go to the national museum of computing at bletchley park. it's fucking brilliant.
>>8243180
>maneframe systems
you sound like an expert anon
Go and read all the Mondo 2000 back issues.
>>8242915
This is a magazine from the first half of the 80s in the UK.
Ceruzzi's History of Modern Computing covers that period in a fair amount of detail too.
>>8245167
>http://awfullibrarybooks.net/
That's a good one. Thanks.
>>8243198
I like this idea.
the last part of inherent vice
>>8245119
>http://textfiles.com/wdirectory.html
Meh, the Jargon File is more authoritative and has more on the history of hacker terms going back to ww2:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/
Google the following:
Jaquard loom weaving automata
Babbage Difference Machine
Electromechanic computers
Delay line memory
Soviet hydraulic computers
Analog computers
Many-valued logic
Zuse Z1
The Perceptron
Systolic arrays
As for weird-ass programming languages:
Algol, Forth, Lisp
>>8248404
Forgot Plankalkül, the programming language of the 3rd Reich. Everything is parallel in Plankalkül.
>>8248404
Algol isn't weird ass, though it is time appropriate.
>>8248419
oh wow, almost malbolge-tier.
other weird programming languanges:
brainfuck
befunge (best I've used w.r.t. esolangs)
Get these books
Three Degrees Above Zero: Bell Labs in the Information Age
The Soul of the New Machine
How the World Was One
True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier
So no one asked who is the girl?
