Category: Stories & Inspiration
Stories of science, technology, startup journeys and lessons from history.
Three Thousand Circuit Cards and Rusted Germanium: The Five-Year Restoration of the IBM 1401
How a volunteer team of engineers restored two early 1960s IBM 1401 mainframes by repairing rusted germanium transistors and building custom hardware emulators.
Fractal Skies and Alien Symbols: How ERE Informatique Forged the French Touch
How Philippe Ulrich and ERE Informatique launched Captain Blood in 1987 and established the French Touch aesthetic in European game design.
Directory Listings and the Letter V: Alan Emtage and the Architecture of Archie
In 1990, McGill student Alan Emtage created Archie, the first content search engine, organizing FTP file directories into a searchable central index.
Scores, Signs, and Slipping Memory: How Mild Cognitive Impairment Is Defined and Felt
Explore how mild cognitive impairment is clinically defined, measured through testing, and experienced by families navigating memory decline.
A Soyuz Liftoff, a Delayed Module, and 115 Days Aboard Mir
In 1995, astronaut Norman Thagard launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket to join Expedition 18, establishing key operational foundations for international space travel.
Pascal, Plug-ins, and 128,000 Lines of Code: The Internal Architecture of Photoshop 1.0
How Thomas and John Knoll built Photoshop 1.0 using clean Pascal, assembly code, and virtual memory abstractions to handle large digital images.
Menus, Mainframes, and the Yo-Yo Switch: How CompuServe Routed Early Online Communities
Discover how CompuServe used custom load-balancing software to connect early home microcomputer owners across dozens of mainframe hosts.
A Hostile Cash Bid and a Fortune 500 Email System: The Rapid Rise of Scandinavia’s Early Dot-Com Expansion
How Sweden’s pension fund backed a hostile takeover for enterprise email tech before the dot-com bubble burst.
A Laboratory in the Cargo Bay: Training the Non-Career Astronauts of Spacelab 1
How NASA and ESA integrated guest scientists onto Space Shuttle Columbia on STS-9, establishing international training standards for orbit.
Code Name Warhol: How a Rogue Apple Team Built Software Video from Scratch
In 1990, a rogue Apple software team launched project Warhol to create software-only digital video, establishing the foundation for the MPEG-4 standard.
SIGNAL TITANS