Creatures of Thought
Deep historical narratives on computing, telecommunications, and technological evolution.
technicshistory.comAtari had skillfully blended the ease-of-use and dazzling audiovisual experience of a video game console with the expandability and programmability of a personal computer.
Deep, book-length explorations of computing and technology history, written in interconnected series that span years. The current "Bicycle for the Mind" series traces the personal computing revolution from its earliest days, while past series have covered telecommunications infrastructure and the steam age. Each post reads like a chapter from a well-researched history book — rich with primary sources and context that makes you see familiar technology with fresh eyes.
Publishing since 2016.
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Publishes a few times per month
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English
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The Home Computer Hybrids: Atari, TI, and the FCC
It’s difficult to say with certainty what the most popular titles or genres were in the early years of computer games. Many of the games were sold directly by mail-order, or through tiny single-proprietor stores, and no software trade organization was collecting comprehensive sales statistics. In 1980, the magazine Softalk began running a list of the top-thirty best-selling Apple II programs based on retailer surveys. It did not (and could not) provide absolute sales figures, but, although VisiC...
The Rise of Computer Games, Part II: Digitizing Nerddom
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, one could participate in a variety of (mostly novel) hobbies that all asked “what-if”: reading and watching science fiction (especially Star Trek), reading the writings of Tolkien and his growing body of imitators, playing tabletop war games that simulated everything from ancient warfare to World War II, engaging in the simulated medieval battles of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), and imbibing the romanticized past of renaissance fairs. All opened t...
The Rise of Computer Games, Part I: Adventure
Author’s note: I originally intended for this post to cover adventure games, computer role-playing games, wargames and other simulations, a brief look at the home video game market, and finally the rise of hybrids that fused home video game systems with personal computers. In the grand scheme of the story about personal computers that I am trying to tell, it probably does not make sense to lavish nearly 7,000 words on early adventure games alone, but it’s a topic of personal interest...
The Useful Personal Computer
To market their new products to people who had not already spent years pining for a computer of their own, the creators of the second wave of microcomputers had to face head on the question of what the microcomputer was actually good for. What was its value, if not as a hobby plaything for self-motivated computer nerds? To answer that question, they sketched inventive fantasies about how the computer might somehow be an aid to everyday domestic life. They also harnessed the computer’s symbolic p...
Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward A Mass Market
In 1977, three new microcomputers appeared on the scene that broke free from the industry’s hobbyist roots: the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80. Much later, in the 1990s, journalists and historians began reverently referring to this group as “the Trinity.” Though all three machines had different origins and different trajectories (Apple, for example, appeared in 1978 to be an also-ran before rising to eclipse all of its rivals), the distinctiveness of the 1977 gener...
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If you've ever wondered how we got from room-sized computers to the device in your pocket, this blog tells that story better than almost anything else on the web.