history

Turning up their noses at modern handheld devices, British researchers are rebuilding a 60-year-old, room-size computer that used 5-foot-long tubes of mercury as memory.

The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was first built at Cambridge University. It's recognized as the world's first practical electronic stored-program computer, and unlike earlier program-controlled computers, none of its wiring or switches had to be changed to perform a new calculation.

Programs were fed into the machine on a punched tape. The first was run on May 6, 1949, computing a set of square numbers.

As a general-purpose research tool, EDSAC was … Read more

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., tomorrow will unveil what it's calling a "21st century makeover" with its newly renovated building and greatly increased exhibit space.  After two years and $19 million, the museum has an entirely new look and feel and a major new exhibit called "Revolution: The First 2,000 Years of Computing."

As you enter the museum you see some of the first computing devices other than our ancestor's 10 fingers and 10 toes, including the abacus. But as you walk around, you see how technology has progressed … Read more

Injecting some high-brow culture into a smartphone realm more characterized by people texting at dinner and playing video games on the subway, the British Library has released an application to allow exploration of some of its collection.

OK, so perhaps it won't mean people rushing to read Beowulf in the original Old English from 1,000 years ago. But it's nice to know the option is there, and the application comes with commentary from experts such as a video on Beowulf by linguist David Crystal.

In any event, it is encouraging at least to this history and museum … Read more

What a year 2010 has been for cloud computing.

We've seen an amazing year of innovation, disruption, and adoption--one I personally think will go down in history as one of the most significant years in computing history. Without a doubt, a significant new tool has been added to the IT toolbox, and its one that will eventually replace most of the tools we know today.

Don't agree with me? Well, with the help of my generous Twitter community--and in the spirit of the season here in the US--I've assembled 12 innovations and announcements from 2010 that had … Read more

While the dollar figure and partnership details of Microsoft's investment in Facebook back in 2007 were made public, one detail that had not been discussed by either company was that Microsoft had made a valiant effort to acquire the social network outright.

That much was confirmed this morning at the Le Web conference in Paris by Fritz Lanman, Microsoft's senior director or corporate strategy and acquisitions, TechCrunch reports. Speaking to Le Web conference organizer Loic Le Meur as part of a panel on "how to get acquired," Lanman shared details on how the deal had gotten … Read more

Last week, I spent a couple of hours at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., which for a small-time collector of tech artifacts is like Charlie getting into the chocolate factory.

The highlight of the visit was a personal tour by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who wandered among the displays and explained how some of the products had influenced his understanding and passion for technology, which culminated in the creation of the first Apple computer. You can see several videos of Wozniak, who was very generous with his time despite nursing a sore throat, here.

My relatively short … Read more

A site for sharing pornographic content is the target of a lawsuit accusing it of improperly checking what other Web sites visitors had used.

Plaintiffs David Pitner and Jared Reagan, both of Newport Beach, Calif., accuse YouPorn operator Midstream Media of the Netherlands of violating the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California's computer crime law; of engaging in deceptive and unfair business practices; and of unlawful and unfair competition.

The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the central district of California, accuses YouPorn of, among other things, "intentionally accessing plaintiffs'...computers without … Read more

Most browsers have an easily accessible history option where you can browse through and choose previously visited sites to open again. Not only are histories available, but some browsers including Safari have options for reopening the last closed window or even all the windows from the last session when the browser was run. In Safari these are available in the "History" menu.

Open the last closed window

This feature in Safari is exceptionally useful if you inadvertently close a window containing a page or pages you needed to view. Granted you can always go to the history list … Read more