Computing History Podcast

13/07/2020

Episode 1.5 is finally out. Enjoy!

http://comphistpod.com/1-5-the-journey-to-the-electric-wire-part-2/

This week we conclude the timeline part of our journey with a 44 minute episode. Sorry it took 2 weeks to make. There's a lot of things in this episode so I'm just going to start dropping them here. Turgot's Map of Paris with the annotations John Rocque's Map of London with the annotations

09/07/2020

Almost done with 1.5, I know it's late but it must be correct. More details in the episode

There's lots of goodies in this episode including this:

The Turgot map was published in 1739 as an atlas of 20 non-overlapping sectional bird's-eye view maps. It has been described as "the first all-comprising graphical inventory of the [French] capital, down to the last orchard and tree, detailing every house and naming even the most modest cul-de-sac

Louis Bretez, was allowed to enter into the mansions, houses and gardens in order to take measurements and draw pictures. He worked for two years (1734-1736)

https://www.easyzoom.com/imageaccess/08387ae469c54f6894ad37f4955223de

09/07/2020

Abbe Nollet, pondering which cute small defenseless little animal he'll electrocute next in his experiments which first document the medical risks and consequences of being electrocuted:

"Then he turns to animals. Two cats, "each four months old, of nearly the same size, and fed alike," are placed in cages, one of them being near the conductor of the electric machine, which is excited for some hours. Both the electrified cat and the non-electrified cat lose weight, but the electrified cat loses the most, about 54 grains. Nollet thinks this may be due to "difference in temperament," although he admits that the cats went placidly to sleep, except when he gave them shocks. Then he electrifies pigeons and small birds, and finally persons, and concludes that in all cases there is a loss in weight due to "transpiration;" but when he attempts to treat actual maladies he fails. "The paralytics, experiencing no relief which would sustain their patience (for some is necessary in order that they may undergo this sort of torture), complained bitterly," and the Abbe" abandons for the time his high hopes of thus relieving suffering humanity."

From "A History of Electricity: (The Intellectual Rise in Electricity) from Antiquity to the Days of Benjamin Franklin" Park Benjamin, J. Wiley & Sons. 1895

Someone had to find this stuff out.

06/07/2020

The Frenchman Abbé Nollet took the hanging boy demonstration on the road. He used Stephen Gray's and Du Fay's (coming soon in 1.5) observations and created a theatrical show.

Depicted below is the brass leaf attraction, the glass rod and someone getting a spark by touching the boy's nose.

A Bill Nye of mid 18th century Paris, Nollet worked to popularize science and bring it to the masses

06/07/2020

Otto von Guericke can be fairly credited with inventing a primitive form of frictional electrical machine before 1663. His electrostatic generator was created using a sulfur globe attached to an iron rod. By rubbing the sphere with a dry hand, von Guericke was able to impart a charge imbalance on the surface, which would allow him to attract and repel other objects

05/07/2020

An aeolipile, also known as a Hero's engine, is a simple steam turbine which spins when the central water container is heated. In the 1st century AD, Heron of Alexandria described the device in Roman Egypt, and many sources give him the credit for its invention.

What was the practical use of such technology?

Why it was the first "car" of course, in 1672 by Ferdinand Verbiest

05/07/2020

Bose's "Electric Kiss" (also called "Electric Venus") demonstration was immensely popular with spectators, and it was little more than a variation on Stephen Gray's "Flying Boy" demonstration. An attractive young lady was invited to stand on a block of insulating resin, and she was given a moderate static charge from a spinning globe. A young man from the audience was then invited to give her a kiss, and, in the process, the pair received a reasonable shock.

This demonstration combined both the scientific illustration of charge accumulation with the naughtiness of a stolen kiss, so it became a mainstay of all electrical showmen and scientific demonstrators.

02/07/2020

Coming somewhere around 2022/2023 to the computing history podcast.
"A brazen head, brass, or bronze head was a legendary automaton in the early modern period whose ownership was ascribed to late medieval scholars such as Roger Bacon who had developed a reputation as wizards. Made of brass or bronze, the male head was variously mechanical or magical. Like Odin's head of Mimir in Norse paganism"

30/06/2020

If you enjoyed the suspended child experiments of Stephen Gray in episode 1.3, wait until you hear about Hausen's electric machine coming next week, as the journey to the electric wire continues on computing history.

29/06/2020

The Stolen Stars, a short play about the Flamsteed / Newton controversy is now up! Enjoy http://comphistpod.com/1-4-the-stolen-stars-a-dramatization-of-the-flamsteednewton-controversy/

1.4 The Stolen Stars: A Dramatization of the Flamsteed/Newton Controversy 2020-06-28 This week’s episode is a 10 minute original play based on the Flamsteed/Newton controversy surrounding the 1712 version of Historia Coelestis Britannica, based on the work of the royal astronomer John Flamsteed. J...

24/06/2020

Propaganda for Next Week's Episode

23/06/2020

Woot woot! Episode 1.3 is out!

Let's go over early electricity. But we have to go over early science first. We start with Stephen Gray who explored the phenomena of electricity in the early 1700s and talk about his wacky experiments involving suspending children from threads, rubbing giant fishing poles from balconies strung into gardens and courtyards, and other strange contraptions. I also take jabs at Isaac Newton because low-key, even 293 years later he still deserves it

http://comphistpod.com/1-3-the-journey-to-the-electric-wire/

1.3 The Journey to the Electric Wire 2020-06-23 Let’s go over early electricity. But we have to go over early science first. We start with Stephen Grey who explored the phenomena of electricity in the early 1700s and talk about his wacky experiments involving suspending children from threads, rubb...

19/06/2020

Boyle's Air Pump was a way to create a vacuum in a small sphere for experiments "in vacuo". Not many existed and people like Boyle would loan it out to people who wanted to run experiments.

19/06/2020

The Hauksbee electric generator was a modified version of an earlier model by Otto von Guericke. In this model the glass ball filled with a vacuum and some mercury could get charged so that when someone put their hand near it it would lightly glow, enough to be read by.

In a way, it was one of the earliest electric lamps, from 1719.

11/06/2020

The Variophone was an optical synthesizer that utilized sound waves cut onto cardboard disks rotating synchronously with a moving 35mm movie film while being photographed onto it to produce a continuous soundtrack. Afterwards this filmstrip is played as a normal movie by means of a film projector. Being read by photocell, amplified and monitored by a loudspeaker, it functions as a musical recording process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Zb4rso82M

Nikolai Voinov (1900-1958) demonstrates the techniques of Paper Sound and the creation of music for animation. The demonstration includes two short animation...

10/06/2020

Thanks for the feedback. We'll be freezing the timeline in episode 1.2 and do a bit more background including talking about a hypothetical counterfactual world of non-electric computers (they exist) and what's so special about electricity anyway.

10/06/2020

Episode 1.1 is out. 1.2 will fill in some missing details after a bit a feedback. That's drop in a week or two.

I'm waiting for better audio equipment
http://comphistpod.com/1-1-the-dream-of-electric-communications-part-1/

1.1 The Dream of Electric Communications Part 1 2020-06-09 This covers the history of the telegraph from 1752 up to about 1785. During a period when many dreamed of electric communications but did not have the resources of the means to start the revolution, they only had, and talked about, their far...

08/06/2020

You've probably heard of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). This refers to a clock, in Greenwich, UK.

In the following 1852 text, Electricity and the Electric Telegraph, George Wilson lays a glimpse of the growth of Greenwich and their plans.

Clocks and timekeeping, essential for networking will be in a future episode.

Full text available here: https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=YCZHAAAAIAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP6

08/06/2020

08/06/2020