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The Amazing Stories behind the Technology!

2018 Featured Stories
2017
Featured Stories
2016 Featured Stories
2013 Featured Stories
2012 Featured Stories
2010
Featured Stories
2009
Featured Stories
2008 Featured Stories
2007 Featured Stories
2006 Featured Stories

2005 Featured Stories
2004 Featured Stories
2003 Featured Stories
2002 Featured Stories
2001 Featured Stories
1998-2000 (and before) Featured Stories
Other Stories at DigiBarn TV and DigiBarn Radio!
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Read the DigiBarn Newsletters for more events and news of the DigiBarn

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if you have a story to tell!

2018 Featured Stories


New for May 2018 PCC #1!

People's Computer Company newsletters (newspapers, really) first published in October 1972 from the People's Computer Company in Menlo Park, California, the first public learning center for computers. PCC was the pioneer long before the Homebrew Computer Club or Computer Lib.

Check out PCC Vol. 1, No. 1. here. Thanks Bob Albrecht for providing these early computer cultural gems and Mike Naberezny for scanning them!

2017 Featured Stories


April 13, 2017: Bruce Damer, the passing of Bob Taylor. Listen to DigiBarn founder Bruce Damer interviewing him for the Levity Zone podcast in 2014.

2016 Featured Stories


Aug 1, 2016: Bruce Damer and Marc Weber interviewed Severo Ornstein (video) for an oral history conducted at the Computer History Museum.Transcript of oral history available here . This extensive interview covers Severo's career from the 1950s through to the 1980s on such projects as: Whirlwind, TX-2, LINC, ARPANnet/IMP, Xerox PARC and CPSR. His time working with Wesley Clark on the LINC and later on at BB&N is also mentioned. (interview originally conducted on Nov 20, 2015)


February 2016: Our coverage and memorial site for Wesley A. Clark, Computer Designer, "father of personal, interactive computing".

With his work in the late 1950s and 1960s designing the TX-0, the TX-2 and the LINC, Wes Clark created the first experience of what we today call "personal, interactive computing." Using the TX-2, Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad, the ancestor of all interactive graphics systems, which was an inspiration for Douglas Engelbart's later oN-Line System at SRI. The LINC is considered to be the first workstation, built by the user from a kit, then transported to a lab, office and even used in a home. Alan Kay wrote that "..the feel of the LINC was the feel of personal computing." When we interact with the screen of a computer or touch a tablet or phone today, we are experiencing a vision first brought to life decades ago by Wes Clark.

A Personal note from DigiBarn founder and curator Dr. Bruce Damer
When we heard the news, Galen and I stood by the LINC in the DigiBarn for a quiet moment of remembrance and deep appreciation of a truly great man who humbly with humor, wit and genius changed our world (and who would rap your knuckles for saying so).

Find memories and tributes from friends and colleagues at our Wesley A. Clark Memorial Site

Significant News Media Stories:


New York Times (Feb 28 2016): Wesley A. Clark, Made Computing Personal, Dies at 88


TechRepublc story Wesley A. Clark, legendary computer engineer, dies at 88

See our pages on the LINC here
Wesley A. Clark page on Wikipedia

2013 Featured Stories


February 2013: New DigiBarn project around key Apple II DOS development documents and code (1978)

2012 Featured Stories


August 2012: DigiBarn "computer family" exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

2010 Featured Stories


A Classic Returns!

A new eBook Small Basic translation of the original "BASIC Computer Games" book originally edited by David Ahl (November 2010)

2010 Featured Stories


Ed Roberts (1941-2010) See our memorial page here.

2009 Featured Stories


A Digibarn birthday celebration! December 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of MITS, creator of the Altair 8800 and initiator of the homebrew and personal computing revoltion. Catch our special features on the founding of MITS in 1969 and it subsequent rise (and fall).


Barry Yarkon and the first desktop publishing with a microcomputer and the history of Barron Technical Products
(Sept 2009)

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Rich Didday on his life and times including Finite State Fantasies
(May 2009)


Bob Frankston causes Global Financial Meltdown (interviews with Bruce Damer)
(April 2009)


Interview of BYTE Magazine founder Carl Helmers
(April 2009)

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Bruce Damer with Tony Sale in front of the Colossus on visit to Bletchley Park
(February 2009)


Steve Wozniak visits the Digibarn
(video from 2006)


The Mac at 25! See our special pages of historic and unique artifacts!(thanks Dom Sagolla for his Big Words iPhone app showing the "25") (January 2009)

2008 Featured Stories


Bill Pentz and the earliest history of the Microcomputer
(Fall 2008)


Mike Smithwick on Distant Suns, a pioneering astronomy program on microcomputers (Fall 2008)


Bana Witt's story of meeting Jef Raskin, becoming Apple's 49th employee and more
(October 2008)


New! John Redant updates the famous IEEE Bushy Tree as a Wikia! See original graphical Bushy Tree here (July 2008).


Rob Barnaby on the history of WordStar, IMSAI, Micropro and more! (June 2008)


Videos of Mockingbird @ Xerox PARC, 1980
the first screen-based computer music scoring system (May 2008)


New! Digibarn features in CNET TV's Tales of Silicon Valley (January-February 2008)


DigiBarn Radio!

 
DigiBarn TV!

There are always more super stories at DigiBarn Radio and DigiBarn TV

2007 Featured Stories


The restoration of the LINC,"the World's First Personal Computer" (all year 2007)


Dwight Elvey gives us two video tours: Jef Raskin's Canon Cat and the classic ASR-33 Teletype (April 2007)

2006 Featured Stories


A Digibarn special event: Apple @ 30 - 1976, Apple in the Garage
(was held Nov 4th, 2006)


The Processor Technology Sol-20 30th birthday event was held at the Vintage Computer Festival (Nov 5, 2006)


The (Xerox Star Icon) World According to Norm Cox
(posted October 2006)


New! Ken Sumrall and playing Spacewar! on the PDP-1
(and Snow Flake and music!) (Sept 2006)


Special stories surrounding the 25th Anniversary of the launch of the IBM Personal Computer 5150
(all year, 2006)


The World of Xerox at the Digibarn
- or how Xerox changed the world but nobody knows about it! (all year 2006)


A contributed work! James Humberd on his Computer Memories writing "Memories of Early Computer Days"

Find the long version at: https://www.travel-tidbits.com/tidbits/003673.shtml and the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing version here.


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Brooke and the story of Felt & Tarrant and the comptometers
(June 2006)


The computers and history of Southwest Technical Products Corp
(May 2006)


IBM Corporate Ads, 1948-1954

See how the computer giant defined the value of computing for the public 50 years ago! (Jan 2006)


Mark Goldstein's story on MicroAge, Computer Music, Office and Home of the Future and more!
(Jan 2006)


2005 Featured Stories


Report on the 30th birthday of the Homebrew Computer Club "Homebrew@30"

A special event was held by the DigiBarn at the Vintage Computer Festival 8.0, November 5-6, 2005


The story of the DigiBarn's Cray Supercomputer collection
(October, 2005)


An interview with JJ Webb on the birth of the virus scanner, poetry on the (early) Internet
and much much more (April 1005).



The Story of the Xerox 9700 Electronic (Laser) Printing System
(March 2005)


We marked Jef Raskin's passing on February 26, 2005. See our pages with our last interviews with Jef and our special feature: Jef Raskin a life of design (February 2005).


Mike Riddle relates the History of AutoCAD, EasyCAD, FastCAD and CAD in general (January 2005)

2004 Featured Stories


The Woz Wonderbook is here! (December 2004)


Maze War 30 Year Retrospective
(special event, November 2004)


MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, original 1975 brochure
(a peek into the birth of computer science as a discipline) (Nov 2004)


Jef Raskin's Story "Meeting Merlin" (posted Summer 2004)

The Mac at 20
A special feature story at the DigiBarn
(Jan 2004)

2003 Featured Stories


The Xerox Alto 30th Birthday Celebration (a special event, October 2003)


The Intran Story
(as told by those who were there - Fall 2003 and ongoing)


Is this the first Microsoft BASIC released to Apple Computer?
You be the judge! (Feb 2003)


Interview with Wendell Sander, father of the Apple III
(interview by David Ottalini from 1986 - Feb 2003)


Visit of DigiBarn Curator Bruce Damer to The Smithsonian Institution's Information Age exhibit in Washington DC
(January 2003)


Maze War.. the first 3D multi user game, lives again at the DigiBarn, read its story!

2002 Featured Stories


John Redant and Bruce Damer's reworking of the famous "Bushy Tree" diagram of visual computing systems
(Summer 2002 and ongoing)


F-Robert Trépanier's history
in the Canadian Computer Business from the 1950s (July 2002)


Arrival of the Cray 1 Supercomputer and Cray Q2 Prototype at the DigiBarn (April 2002)


Incredible stories in the first and second issues of BYTE Magazine (Spring 2002)


NEW: See Alan O Freier's history of the Xerox "D*" Machines from Dolphin, to Dorado to Dandelion (Xerox 8010 Star) here. (Feb 2002)


NEW: Daniel Kottke's Amazing Apple Relics (Feb 2002)


Butler Lampson's famous 1972 Memo "Why Alto"? (Jan 2002)


Dave Curbow's extensive Xerox Star Historical Documents (Jan 2002 and ongoing).

2001 Featured Stories


See Allan Lundell's video of a historic Steve Wozniak invitation to the Us Festival in 1982
(May 2001). Also see DigiBarn TV for many other movies by Allan including the DigiBarn's opening day and a personal tour of the museum by curator Bruce Damer.

1998-2000 (and before) Featured Stories


Final Public Demonstration of the Xerox Star 8010 at Xerox PARC (June 1998) and
Bruce Damer's site on the story of the Star 8010, 6085, Alto, PERQ and Elixir Desktop: birth of the desktop metaphor


Bruce Damer, DigiBarn Curator's History of Elixir Technologies and its Products (covering the years 1985-94, written 1998)



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