Arnold Spielberg is renowned for his work on machines like the RCA BIZMAC and the GE-225 for General Electric. In one of the Museum's earliest oral histories, Gardner Hendrie interviews Spielberg about his work in real-time and point-of-sales s

Ivan Sutherland: “Virtual Reality before It Had that Name”

Feb 12th, 2019 25m 1s

Ivan Sutherland is often referred to as the “Father of Computer Graphics.” His work at Harvard, MIT, the University of Utah, and DARPA aided the development of networking, graphics, virtual reality, and robotics technologies. In this 1996 lectu

Grace Morton: Computers and Poetry

Jan 8th, 2019 19m 19s

Computer programmer and Grolier Award–winning poet Grace Morton presents a talk and demo on computer poetry as a part of the Bits + Bites lectures at the Boston Computer Museum in 1983. Morton uses a TRS-80 computer to create poetry, both gener

Seymour Cray: “What's All This about Gallium Arsenide?” (Part 2)

Dec 18th, 2018 25m 40s

Seymour Cray is often referred to as the “Father of Supercomputing.” In part two of his 1988 lecture “What's All This about Gallium Arsenide?,” Cray continues his talk on the use of gallium arsenide in his Cray-3 and Cray-4 supercomputer design

Grace Hopper: Howard Aiken, the Harvard Mark I and the First Bug

Dec 4th, 2018 19m 5s

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper's career in computer science began in the 1940s. Her work with early computers, including the Harvard Mark I, led to ground-breaking and fundamental advances in computer science. Here, Hopper discusses her work

Seymour Cray: “What's All This about Gallium Arsenide?” (Part 1)

Nov 20th, 2018 21m 17s

Seymour Cray is often referred to as the “Father of Supercomputing.” In part one of his 1988 lecture “What's All This about Gallium Arsenide?,” Cray talks about the use of gallium arsenide in his Cray-3 and Cray-4 supercomputer designs and how

Electronic Music Pioneer Suzanne Ciani

Oct 2nd, 2018 17m 11s

Suzanne Ciani is a Grammy-nominated musician, composer, and sound designer whose career has spanned more than 40 years. Here, she discusses her work with the Buchla synthesizers, designing audio logos for various companies, and how she carved a

Atari Cofounder Ted Dabney

Sep 18th, 2018 22m 34s

In his 2012 oral history, engineer and Atari cofounder Samuel F. “Ted” Dabney discusses his work with Nolan Bushnell and the early days of Atari, including the development of the arcade game Pong. Dabney passed away on May 26, 2018.Image: © All

Designer, Entrepreneur and CEO Evelyn Berezin (Part 2)

Sep 4th, 2018 16m 28s

Evelyn Berezin was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1925. She received her bachelor’s degree in physics in 1945 from NYU, followed by an Atomic Energy Commission fellowship for graduate study in 1946. In 1962 Evelyn Berezin built a reservations

Roads Not Taken: The iPhone’s Software Stack

Aug 21st, 2018 22m 31s

Hansen Hsu, curator for the Software History Center, explores the software development kit that almost wasn’t and the choices that enabled Apple’s App Store to spawn a worldwide app economy. This episode features clips from a number of public p

Designer, Entrepreneur and CEO Evelyn Berezin (Part 1)

Aug 7th, 2018 29m 40s

Evelyn Berezin was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1925. She received her bachelor’s degree in physics in 1945 from New York University, followed by an Atomic Energy Commission fellowship for graduate study in 1946. In 1962 Berezin built a rese

Henry Tropp “The 1940s: The First Personal Computer Era” (Part 2)

Jul 24th, 2018 17m 21s

Henry Tropp, a professor of mathematics at Humboldt State University, was one of the speakers at the first West Coast Computer Faire's Saturday night banquet in 1977. This episode captures part two of his talk, “The 1940s: The First Personal Co

Henry Tropp “The 1940s: The First Personal Computer Era” (Part 1)

Jul 10th, 2018 22m 26s

Henry Tropp, a professor of mathematics at Humboldt State University, was a speaker at the first West Coast Computer Faire's Saturday night banquet in 1977. This episode captures part one of his talk, “The 1940s: The First Personal Computer Era

Richard Shoup and SuperPaint

Jun 26th, 2018 25m 42s

Richard Shoup (1943−2015) won an Emmy and a Technical Oscar for his foundational work in computer graphics and the development of the early graphics system, SuperPaint. The system created graphics for projects as diverse as NASA's Pioneer Venus

Harry Huskey, Early Computers and SWAC

Jun 12th, 2018 22m 59s

In the debut of From the Archives, we hear Computer History Museum Fellow Harry Huskey (1916-2017) in a rare 1976 recording discussing his work on early computers, including designing the Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC).

Danny Hillis: Connection Machines

Jan 22nd, 2018 19m 6s

Danny Hillis, inventor and cofounder of Thinking Machines Corporation, designed the Connection Machine series of supercomputers. In this 1991 lecture, Hillis describes the development path for the Connection Machines and the design consideratio

Rate