Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell was facing a serious conundrum. His ‘video computer system’, a cartridge-based home video-game console designed to play versions of popular Atari arcade games, was certain to be a big hit, but [more…]
What could be better than connecting to another computer remotely? How about remotely connecting remotely? While these days we take the ‘always connected’ nature of our mobile phones for granted, back in the early 1980s [more…]
While using an on-line service like CompuServe allowed you to chat with people all around the world, its per-hour charge was not that attractive to perpetually-broke teenagers. Also, you couldn’t really go ‘hang out’ with [more…]
So, what if we made a really big Bulletin Board System, one that could be dialed-in to from any city, and where thousands of people could interact, rather than just a few? These days [more…]
So it’s fair to say we might have gone a little crazy tricking out the turtle in microM8‘s OpenGL Apple Logo implementation… New Graphical Primitives: Wireframe: Reminder: SETPC color – sets the ‘pen’ colour SETPOPA [more…]
While the Internet would eventually bring computer-based telecommunications to the masses, by the late 1980s more tech-savvy individuals were already meeting new people and having all sorts of discussions ‘on-line’ – and in some cases [more…]
You might have got the impression, upon entering Jane Smith’s house (sometime in 1986) that her husband was in the process of renovating their kitchen, the sound of a power tool growling and grinding away [more…]
Brøderbund Software Inc. was founded by brothers Doug and Gary Carlston in 1980 after Doug had written Galactic Empire, a space strategy game, on his TRS-80 (retro-trivia: many of the locations in the game have [more…]
In the early 1980s, if you wanted posters to advertise a yard sale or a party, your options were pretty limited. You could get some blank sheets of paper and some crayons or felt markers [more…]
SOON, FOR HUMANITY, THE PARTY WAS GOING TO BE OVER. Successful science fiction preys on our fears of the future – nobody cares about watching a movie about the peaceful existence we’re all going to [more…]
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