Awesome Computer History

A curated list of computer history videos, documentaries and related folklore maintained by Thomas Watson. Inspired by the awesome list thing.

Pull Requests are welcome.

Table of Contents

• Videos
• Old recordings
• Documentaries
• Reflective interviews
• Talks & Lectures
• Movies
• Commercials
• Audio
• Podcasts
• Texts
• Folklore
• Announcements and Memos
• Source Code
• Websites
• License

Videos

Old recordings

• United States Navy Training Media: Basic Mechanisms in Fire Control Computers (1953)
• Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks (1963)
• The Mother of All Demos (1968)
• Xerox Parc - Office Alto Commercial (1972)
• Computer Networks - ARPANET (1972) - The developers of the ARPANET talk about their new network:
• Part 1
• Part 2
• A Computer Animated Hand (1972) - One of the earliest examples of computer animation
• The Computer Literacy Project (1980-1989) - In the 1980s, the BBC explored the world of computing in The Computer Literacy Project (all episodes)
• KRON San Francisco: Primitive Internet report (1981) - KRON San Francisco news segment on how early home computer users could read their morning newspapers online
• The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive (1982)
• The UNIX System: Making Computers Easier to Use (1982)
• 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)
• We Are Apple (1984) - Corporate song that was used during the Macintosh rollout in January, 1984
• Thinking Allowed - Artificial Intelligence (1989) - Interview with John McCarthy, creator of Lisp and one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence
• Erlang: The Movie (1990)
• 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
• Steve Jobs: The Crazy Ones (1997) - Steve Jobs talks about The Crazy Ones marketing campaign on internal Apple meeting

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
• The Internet: Behind the Web (2000) - Documentary about development of internet from 1950-60's to 21st century.
• Code Rush (2000) - The story of Netscape and the birth of Mozilla ^7.3/10