history

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More on Paul Otlet's "Mundaneum"

Paul Otlet's work first caught my attention last May due to a 2003 Boxes and Arrows article. Otlet's work was a sort of conceptual precursor to the World Wide Web, and was in effect an extremely well-organized and mechanized library -- but I'd never heard of him, despite having been through a pretty thorough Library Science Bachelor's program. Now the New York Times has a detailed article, complete with new graphics and a video, on Otlet's efforts. Here's a taste: In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans... READ ON

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George Dyson on the Birth of the Computer

George Dyson returns to TED with a seventeen-minute talk explaining the origins of the digital computer -- in hilarious style. Briefly starting with Leibniz's machine-based calculus proposal from 1679, Dyson takes us on a humorous ride through early computer development, with tons of anecdotes from early computer engineers' notebooks (including scans of all sorts of amusing notes). (If you can't see the visuals well enough below, try downloading the full-size MP4 file). If you like history or math,... READ ON

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A Red Phone FAQ

The Red Phone, also known as the Red Telephone, the Moscow-Washington hotline and the Hot Line, is a "confidence building measure" and communications system designed to decrease tensions and prevent accidental nuclear war by providing direct contact between the leaders of the United States and Russia. It links the White House (via the National Military Command Center) with the Kremlin.... READ ON

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Code Rush: The Inside Story of Netscape

Today we take great web browsers for granted -- there are several free and open options, and they all seem to work pretty well. But a decade ago, we were still used to paying cash money for new browser releases, and Netscape was doing battle with Microsoft in the courts as well as con users' desktops. In the rush to ship new and better products, and change the browser marketplace, Netscape was about to do something radical: go open source. Netscape was also about to merge with AOL -- not exactly an... READ ON

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Memorize the Presidents With This Song

Folky troubadour Jonathan Coulton has recorded "Washy Ad Jeffy," a mnemonic device/folk song that helps you remember the order of all the US presidents. By nicknaming the presidents with differing numbers of syllables (like "Jeffy" for Jefferson or "Ad" for Adams), the number of syllables tells you how many terms (or partial terms) that president served. Coulton describes the song's history: My father learned it from Mrs. Govan, his 8th grade history teacher at Memorial Junior High School in Ohio.... READ ON

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The World Ends Today: 7 Modern Doomsday Predictions that Didn't Pan Out

For centuries, people have claimed to know when the world would end. Last Thursday, the House of Yahweh group from Texas announced that the end of the world was to begin June 12, 2008 (today). Not exactly the gift I had in mind for my 20th birthday. However, this isn't the first time the group has claimed the end was nigh. Yisrayl Hawkins (pictured) had previously predicted that nuclear war would start September 12, 2006. When the date passed with no war, it was instead called the start of a nine-month... READ ON

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We Love Who They Aren't: 7 Famous Impostors

Passing yourself off as someone else could land you in prison, but if you are convincing enough, your (fake) life could be the subject of a book or movie! Princess... READ ON

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The Height Gap

We've blogged about the relationship between height and pay before, as well as height and electability, but I've just come across a four-year-old New Yorker article on height and how it's changing around the world. In The Height Gap, reporter Burkhard Bilger explains anthropometric history -- the study of the history of human height, and what factors contribute to it. From Bilger's article: Tall men, a series of studies has shown, benefit from a significant bias. They get married sooner, get... READ ON

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Documentaries I Like: Connections

Connections was a documentary series produced for the BBC in 1978. It sought to explain human history through an "alternative view of change" in which multiple aspects of history, including technology, religion, and finance combine to bring about social change. This mode of analysis moves beyond conventional linear narrative, and as a result embraces complexity. Each episode is an essay connecting several seemingly disparate events or technologies through an extended web of logic -- it's great fun to... READ ON

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Modeling Economics Using Water

Engineer/economist Bill Phillips, a New Zealand native, built a machine to model the British economy in 1949. Although it was high-tech for its time, today the Phillips Machine seems a little...nutty. What's odd about the machine is that it used water power -- hydraulics -- to model the flow of money through the British economy. Here are some snippets from yesterday's Guardian article about the machine (emphasis... READ ON