The BBC wanted to show everyone how a computer might be used in schools. A program aired in 1979 asks, “Will Computers Revolutionise Education?” There’s vintage hardware and an appearance of PILOT, made for computer instructions. Using PILOT looks suspiciously like working with a modern chatbot without as much AI noise. The French teacher in […]
Long before we had internet newsfeeds or Twitter, Ceefax delivered up-to-the-minute news right to your television screen. Launched by the BBC in 1974, Ceefax was the world’s first teletext service, offering millions of viewers a mix of news, sports, weather, and entertainment on demand. Fast forward 50 years, and the iconic service is being honored […]
Over the past few years the number of reported near misses between multirotors, or drones as they are popularly referred to, and aircraft has been on the rise. While evidence to back up these reports has been absent time and again. We’ve looked at incident reports, airport closures, and media reporting. The latest chapter comes […]
From today’s perspective, vacuum tubes are pretty low tech. But for a while they were the pinnacle of high tech, and heavy research followed the promise shown by early vacuum tubes in transmission and computing. Indeed, as time progressed, tubes became very sophisticated and difficult to manufacture. After all, they were as ubiquitous as ICs are […]