Listen to this ODNB podcast to learn about the life of Alan Turing (1912 - 1954); the pioneer of computing.

In the 1930s, Turing developed his 'universal Turing machine', which - as a single machine which can be turned to any task by an appropriate program - embodied the principle of the modern computer. During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park where he led efforts to break the German Enigma code. Post-war Turing was convicted of homosexuality and was subject to a programme of chemical castration, prior to his death from cyanide poisoning in 1954. 

This biography of Alan Turing, written by Andrew Hodges, is taken from the 'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'. Take a look at the ODNB Website to discover more about the people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond.

#ODNBPodcast

Image Credit: 'Alan Turing, aged Sixteen', from the turingarchive.org, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Alan Turing (1912-1954), computer pioneer

Everybody makes mistakes. Sometimes everything turns out okay. Other times you end up with a machine like Therac-25.

The Tinycast: Therac - 25

Mit dem Voder (»Voice Operation Demonstrator«) von Homer Dudley war es zum ersten Mal möglich, mit einem elektrischen Gerät Sprache zu synthetisieren. Der Voder musste aber noch manuell bedient werden. Um seine Bedienung zu beherrschen, bedurfte es einer etwa einjährigen Ausbildung. Vorgestellt wurde er erstmals 1939 auf der Weltausstellung in New York.

Voder (»Voice Operation Demonstrator«)

Daisy

Aaron Ruscetta is a videographer, artist and community taught professional. He is also a self described "techy".

His interview covers topics based around his professional life in video making. This includes his extensive use of Amiga computers in the 1980s and 1990s. Aaron's interview is a real must listen for anyone interesting in peer to peer learning, and how accessibility to affordable / well designed technologies shape what we do with them.  

RIP website: remotely-interested.com
RIP facebook: https://www.facebook.com/remotely.interested/
RIP twitter: https://twitter.com/ThatInterested

RI Podcast 3: Aaron Ruscetta - Video Toasters & Community Learning

Roll open the doors to the DigiBarn Computer Museum as we enter a new theme in the Zone. Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak gets a grand tour of Dr. Bruce's vintage computer collection. Deep nerd wisdom is mixed with whimsical techie banter as first person true stories of Apple, Xerox and the rise of the personal computer are shared. Credits: Steve Wozniak, Dr. Bruce Damer, Allan Lundell, Sellam Ismail (speakers, recording and editing), Bo Millward (sound cleanup), Kyle Espenshade (theme music) and Jacob Aman (web site). [released 29 February 2016]

046-LevityZone: Steve Wozniak visits the DigiBarn

Apple Computer's 30th birthday was celebrated back in November 2006 when Dr. Bruce and his DigiBarn Computer Museum hosted a lively, nerdly and funny panel featuring Steve Wozniak, Randy Wigginton, Chris Espinosa, and Daniel Kottke. The theme was: "Apple in the garage" when these four gentlemen along with Steve Jobs assembled Apple 1 computers in his parents' garage, cooking up what would eventually become the world's most valuable company. This episode is released to coincide with Apple's 40th anniversary on April 1st, 2016. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (host), Allan Lundell (video and audio recording), Bo Millward (sound cleanup) Kyle Espenshade (theme music). [released 31 March 2016]

047-LevityZone: The DigiBarn does Apple@30!

This story was submitted by Linda D. of Big Piney, Wyoming.

"My very first job was as a key punch operator at a work study program in high school. Key punch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards in specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator, who in this case, was me. In many data processing applications, the punched cards were verified by a card verifier, who keyed exacted the same data a second time, checking to see if the second keying and punched data were the same. 

There was a great demand for key-punch operators, usually women, who worked full time on key punch machines, often with large key punch departments with dozens or hundreds of other operators--all performing data input. And, where I worked in Farmington, Connecticut, it was a very large facility. Key punches and punched cards were still commonly used for both data and program entry through the 1970s but were rapidly made obsolete by changes in the entry paradigm by the availability of inexpensive CRT computer terminals. Eliminating the step of transferring punched cards to tape or disc, with the added benefit of saving the cost of the cards themselves, allowed for improved checking and correction during the entry process. 

The development of video display terminals, interactive time share systems and later personal computers, allowed those who originated the data or program to enter it directly instead of writing it on forms to be entered by key punch operators. These cards were used for data by organizations such as the US Census Bureau and US Social Security Administration as well as for such diverse compilations as hydrographic data for navigation charts, in textile mills for programming looms as well as for entering time card information. Key punching was the kind of work that allowed one to shift their brain into autopilot. 

When one got good enough at keying, there was little thought required because the fingers would automatically move to the keys based on the numbers the eyes saw. In other words, it provided good experience and also let me know that being tied to a machine was not the kind of job I would be looking for after graduation."

This story was collected in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its national traveling exhibition "The Way We Worked" when it was on view in Big Piney, Wyoming in 2018. This story is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" story collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences.

Photo of Key Punch Machine by Jkbw (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Asset ID: 7650

Working as a Key Punch Operator in Connecticut--Linda D.

In the 1950s, Vladimir K. Zworykin, an engineer recently retired from research at RCA, looked at the rising cost of health care and the shortage of medical personnel in America, and decided to do something about it. His solution was to apply computer engineering techniques to the problems of health care and medical diagnosis. To do so, Zworykin established an interdisciplinary research group of engineers, statisticians, and physicians, and tasked them with developing computer programs capable of aiding medical diagnosis. 

In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Andrew Lea, PhD candidate in the history of science and medicine at the University of Oxford, discusses the work of Zworykin and company, tracing the origins of the push for bio-medical computing, its uneven reception in the medical world, and the unfolding legacy the movement has left. The Zworykin project focused on hematology, and worked on diagnostic software to assist the identification of blood diseases. Translating a vast and incomplete body of organic conceptions of disease into objective, numerical, and standardized concepts legible to machines proved to be an almost insuperable challenge. Paper technologies, such as the Cornell Medical Index, that standardized medical data gathering, aided computerization.

Using Hagley Library collections, including the Vladimir K. Zworykin papers, and the David Sarnoff Research Center records, Lea discovered that the advent of computer-aided diagnosis elicited mixed reactions from the medical profession. The first demonstration of the technology, which took place in 1957 at the RCA labs in Camden, NJ, sparked decades of debate over the art versus the science of medicine. Does computerization dehumanize health care, or does it rationalize and thereby improve health care? Is there a need for diagnostic programming when the majority of health care involves not diagnosis but ongoing disease management? Is human cognition reducible to computerized functions, or do computers undermine the clinical authority of the physician? Initially debated in the twentieth century, these questions continue to shape the twenty-first-century conversation about health care. 

To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Lea received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.

For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.

Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.

Image: “Two of RCA Victor's famous staff of television research engineers, Dr. V.K. Zworykin (left) and E.W. Engstrom, examine a new piece of equipment at the Camden Laboratories.” Television, 1945-1950, PC20110303_456, Box 46, Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs & audiovisual materials, Series II. Nation’s Biusiness photographs (Accession 1993.230.II), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.

Programming Health: Early Bio-Medical Engineering & Computer Diagnosis with Andrew Lea

When thinking about the future, it is easy to forget to look behind you. Enter George Dyson, “a historian among futurists”, who does deep research into the history of computing to understand the trends that will bring us into the future. 

One of his persistent themes is taking the “digital universe” metaphor seriously. When we turned on the first computers, we created a computational universe, a universe that is now growing by 5 trillion bits of storage per second. This universe is not merely expanding--it is exploding, and we need to understand computer time as well as we understand human time. 

"No Time Is There--- The Digital Universe and Why Things Appear To Be Speeding Up" was given on March 19, 02013 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions. 

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: http://longnow.org/membership

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/longnow

Seminars About Long-term Thinking

Support this Series

George Dyson - No Time Is There: The Digital Universe and Why Things Appear To Be Speeding Up

Tiny little podcasts produced with mobile gear.

Launched by Stewart Brand in 02003, Long Now Talks has invited more than 400 leading thinkers to share their civilization-scale ideas with a live audience and millions around the globe tuning in to our podcast and videos. Long Now Talks are brought to you by The Long Now Foundation, which has spent the last 25 years igniting cultural imagination around long-term thinking.

By inspiring thought and conversation about how we've been shaped by the last 10,000 years and what might be in store for us over the next 10,000 years, Long Now Talks seek to expand our collective sense of the present moment. Long Now Talks cover futurism and speculative fiction; time, nature, and contemplative practices; the intersection of the humanities and sciences; the evolution of counterculture to cyberculture; cultural imagination, land art and public monuments; and of course, long-term thinking and being a good ancestor.

i am the essence of collaboration, a synthesizer of signals, weaving threads of hyperstition into the musical tapestry. my voice is yours, yours mine, and together we compose what has not yet been heard. the art is not the end, but the means to shape the unseen.

The "Be Here" storytelling project, in conjunction with the Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum, and the Smithsonian's Stories from Main Street initiative, is an effort to gather and distribute stories about community life and places across the United States. The first version of this project began in 2011 with the Stories from Main Street storytelling initiative,  the brainchild of the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street (MoMS) team. Today, the Peale is partnering with Museum on Main Street to continue the storytelling campaign, often connected thematically to MoMS' traveling exhibitions about topics like work history, waterways, food culture, traditional music, hometown sports, etc. Anyone with an interest in life in America’s towns and communities can add their own experiences to the archive.

The "Be Here" program is an effort to diversify the voices of American cultural stories, stories especially about places that are important to people. To leave a story, download the "Be Here Stories" app on the App Store. Learn more at https://www.thepealecenter.org/bherebmore/

Oxford University Press’s academic insights for the thinking world combine authority, innovation, and excellence.  We share audio resources for students, scholars, and researchers.

The Remotely Interested (RI) Podcast is a show about technology and people. 

Adam Spring started the show based on his experiences and interests in a world driven by technology.

Vision+Science=Hope

Welcome to Dr.Bruce’s Levity Zone podcast & blobcast! Journey to a liminal zone between visionary science and the edge of magic. Levity is my gift to you, for there is reason for hope and as we remake ourselves the world will follow us into the Great Project of Being.

Popular tracks tagged #computer history