Hacker News with Generative AI: History

How the Index Card Cataloged the World (2017) (theatlantic.com)
Like every graduate student, I once holed up in the library cramming for my doctoral oral exams.
Libraries, History, Information Management
43 points by Tomte 7 hours ago | 11 comments
50 Years in Filesystems: 1984 (koehntopp.info)
Progress is sometimes hard to see, especially when you have been part of it or otherwise lived through it. Often, it is easier to see if you compare modern educational material, and the problems discussed with older material. And then look for the research papers and sources that fueled the change.
Technology, History, Filesystems
98 points by kaycebasques 8 hours ago | 15 comments
The Combined Cipher Machine 1940's-1950's (blogspot.com)
Another machine that became increasingly important for the Allies, in the period 1943-45, was the Combined Cipher Machine - CCM. Unfortunately, this machine has not received a lot of attention from historians because there is limited information available on its internal operation and use in the field.
Cryptography, History, Military Technology
13 points by Christrian164 9 hours ago | 1 comments
Why 56k Modems Relied on Digital Phone Lines You Didn't Know We Had (hackaday.com)
If you came of age in the 1990s, you’ll remember the unmistakable auditory handshake of an analog modem negotiating its connection via the plain old telephone system. That cacophony of screeches and hisses was the result of careful engineering. They allowed digital data to travel down phone lines that were only ever built to carry audio—and pretty crummy audio, at that.
Technology, History, Telecommunications, Networking
65 points by beardyw 9 hours ago | 54 comments
Classic film posters from communist Poland (theguardian.com)
Art, History, Poland, Communism, Film
21 points by kieckerjan 16 hours ago | 5 comments
Centennial Light (wikipedia.org)
The Centennial Light is an incandescent light bulb recognized as the oldest known continuously operating light bulb.
Technology, History, Innovation
4 points by talonx 19 hours ago | 0 comments
Emmy Noether: the genius who taught Einstein (prospectmagazine.co.uk)
Emmy Noether is responsible for an idea so important that it ranks alongside Charles Darwin’s concept of evolution by natural selection as a central and unifying principle in science.
Science, Mathematics, History, Physics
24 points by leephillips 1 day ago | 0 comments
Intel the CPU Company (abortretry.fail)
At the start of the 1980s, Intel was in the absolute best position possible for a microprocessor manufacturer. They’d won IBM’s business with 8088, and they had around another 5000 customers for the 8086/8088.
History, Technology, Business, Microprocessors
87 points by rbanffy 1 day ago | 30 comments
There Were Always Enshittifiers (04 Mar 2025): Daily Links from Cory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)
My latest Locus column is "There Were Always Enshittifiers." It's a history of personal computing and networked communications that traces the earliest days of the battle for computers as tools of liberation and computers as tools for surveillance, control and extraction:
History, Technology, Surveillance, Politics, Personal Computing
5 points by rbanffy 2 days ago | 0 comments
Ulithi WWII Naval Forward Base (wikipedia.org)
Ulithi (Yapese: Wulthiy, Yulthiy, or Wugöy;[1] pronounced roughly as YOU-li-thee[2][needs IPA]) is an atoll in the Caroline Islands of the western Pacific Ocean, about 191 km (103 nmi) east of Yap, within Yap State.
History, Geography, Pacific Ocean
4 points by walterbell 2 days ago | 1 comments
What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA's structure (nature.com)
Chemist Rosalind Franklin independently grasped how DNA’s structure could specify proteins.
Science, Biology, DNA, History, Chemistry
4 points by jyscao 2 days ago | 0 comments
NetBSD on a JavaStation (fatsquirrel.org)
Hard as it may be to imagine, there was a time when Java was brand new and exciting.
Operating Systems, Java, History, Retrocomputing
160 points by jaypatelani 2 days ago | 77 comments
Not Time's Fool: A Rare Version of a Shakespeare Sonnet Is Discovered (nytimes.com)
An Oxford researcher found a rare, handwritten variation of one of Shakespeare’s most famous love poems. About 400 years ago, its meaning might have been very different.
Literature, History, Shakespeare, Poetry
7 points by treetalker 2 days ago | 7 comments
Encoding Hangeul, Koreas writing system (brookjeynes.dev)
Hangeul (한글) is the modern writing system for the Korean language, created in 1443 by King Sejong the great, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty1.
Korean Language, Writing Systems, History, Linguistics
5 points by todsacerdoti 2 days ago | 0 comments
Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park (homeip.net)
The Homebrew Computer Club was a legendary early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California.
History, Computer Hardware, California
6 points by giuliomagnifico 2 days ago | 0 comments
AI models makes precise copies of cuneiform characters (news.cornell.edu)
Deciphering some people’s writing can be a major challenge – especially when that writing is cuneiform characters imprinted into 3,000-year-old tablets.
Artificial Intelligence, Archaeology, History, Language, Technology
7 points by geox 2 days ago | 0 comments
The Imaginary Engineer – Karl Hans Janke's Flights of Fancy (cabinetmagazine.org)
During a slide lecture in 1970, Karl Hans Janke laid out for the audience his radical vision for producing infinite quantities of energy.
Science, Engineering, Art, History
24 points by areoform 2 days ago | 9 comments
"Free Software": An idea whose time has passed (medium.com)
Almost forty years ago, in 1985, the idea of “Free Software” was born.
Software, History, Free Software, Opinion
5 points by doener 2 days ago | 13 comments
The British Navy Resisted a Decent Lightning Rod for Decades (ieee.org)
In the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin helped elucidate the nature of lightning and endorsed the protective value of lightning rods. And yet, a hundred years later, much of the public remained unconvinced. As a result, lightning continued to strike church steeples, ship masts, and other tall structures, causing severe damage.
History, Science, Lightning, Ships
5 points by sohkamyung 3 days ago | 1 comments
From MAGA to monarchy: How tech billionaires are engineering American autocracy (salon.com)
Thomas Paine, The Father of the American Revolution, wrote in opposition to the British Monarchy and in favor of American independence. We live in a period of revolution that is rapidly moving toward a return to a monarchy. In our modern times, it is not to have the return of a king, but to an all-powerful executive surrounded by loyal and very wealthy oligarchs. Paine’s writings were both educational and influential in shaping public opinion.
Politics, Social Commentary, Technology, History
14 points by doener 3 days ago | 0 comments
Dangerous Playgrounds of the 1970s: Photos That Prove Safety Wasn't a Priority (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
In the 1970s, before strict safety regulations and cautious parents redefined playgrounds, neighborhood parks were filled with towering jungle gyms, scorching metal slides, and hazardous contraptions that somehow doubled as childhood entertainment.
History, Photography, Childhood, Safety
15 points by fortran77 3 days ago | 11 comments
Game Theory and Settling the Debts of the Deceased in Ancient Times (blogspot.com)
Humans who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago often get a bad rap.
Game Theory, History, Ancient History
46 points by stevefan1999 3 days ago | 5 comments
Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021) (reactormag.com)
At first glance, Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) might appear to be a mere copy of the story of Lawrence of Arabia with some science-fictional window dressing.
Science Fiction, Literature, History, Analysis
278 points by softwaredoug 3 days ago | 194 comments
On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules (1972) (dl.acm.org)
Software Engineering, Systems Design, Computer Science, Programming Languages, History
123 points by reverseflux 3 days ago | 23 comments
The Oldest "Map of America" Is Mysteriously Accurate (thetravel.com)
History, Cartography, United States, Mystery
18 points by bryanrasmussen 3 days ago | 9 comments
The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils (2022) (stlartsupply.com)
It was the summer of 1952, and the executives of Tombow Pencil were about to revolutionize the Japanese pencil industry—or, possibly, fall flat on their faces.
Japanese Pencils, History, Business, Japan
384 points by apokryptein 3 days ago | 111 comments
The weird afterlife of Xbox Kinect (theguardian.com)
Released in 2010 and bundled with the Xbox 360, the Kinect looked like the future – for a brief moment, at least. A camera that could detect your gestures and replicate them on-screen in a game, the Kinect allowed players to control video games with their bodies. It was initially a sensation, selling 1m units in its first 10 days; it remains the fastest-selling gaming peripheral ever.
Gaming, Technology, History, Xbox
76 points by n1b0m 4 days ago | 69 comments
The IBM 650: An appreciation from the field (1986) [pdf] (ed-thelen.org)
IBM, History, Computing, Technology, Hardware
52 points by pncnmnp 4 days ago | 20 comments
Everything Is Chrome (2023) (vale.rocks)
The chances are you’ve heard of Google Chrome. It’s currently the biggest browser in the world, but that comes with issues. Issues that I think need addressing. However, it’s crucial to examine how we reached this stage to form comprehensive opinions. Let’s start at the start with the birth of the first browser.
Web Browsers, Google Chrome, History, Technology, Opinion
53 points by OuterVale 4 days ago | 67 comments
The Cocaine Files (cbc.ca)
Reporter Christian Smith Jr. went undercover in the 1924 Saskatoon drug scene. His series published in the Saskatoon Daily Star revealed a hidden world of ‘snow sniffers,’ ‘hop heads’ and opium smokers.
Journalism, History, Drugs, Canada
37 points by samclemens 4 days ago | 1 comments