{"id":2548,"date":"2009-06-30T19:57:56","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T00:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=2548"},"modified":"2009-08-25T20:32:20","modified_gmt":"2009-08-26T01:32:20","slug":"internet-archive-movies-from-the-history-of-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=2548","title":{"rendered":"Internet Archive: Movies from the History of Computing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Willard McCarty on Humanist (Vol. 23, No. 116.) pointed to some early films about computing which are worth looking at. One is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/InformationM\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cThe Information Machine\u201d<\/a> from IBM in 1956. It is an animated cartoon which presents the computer in a history of human information invention. It presents three functions for computing:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Control or Balance (controlling complex systems)<\/li>\n<li>Design (helping us design and think)<\/li>\n<li>Simulation (modelling and predicting)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Another film is<a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/OnGuard1956\" target=\"_blank\"> On Guard! The Story of SAGE<\/a> also from IBM. This is about IBM\u2019s contributions to air defense, specifically the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Semi_Automatic_Ground_Environment\" target=\"_blank\">SAGE<\/a> system and the development of airborn modular computing. There is a fun part about the interactive operator terminal that visualizes data (as opposed to a TV that shows video.) The narrator actually talks about visualization (though not interactivity.<br \/>\n<embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"640\" \theight=\"504\" \tallowfullscreen=\"true\" \tallowscriptaccess=\"always\" \tsrc=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/flow\/flowplayer.commercial-3.0.5.swf\" \tw3c=\"true\" \tflashvars='config={\"key\":\"#$b6eb72a0f2f1e29f3d4\",\"playlist\":[{\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/InformationM\/format=Thumbnail?.jpg\",\"autoPlay\":true,\"scaling\":\"fit\"},{\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/InformationM\/InformationM_512kb.mp4\",\"autoPlay\":false,\"accelerated\":true,\"scaling\":\"fit\",\"provider\":\"h264streaming\"}],\"clip\":{\"autoPlay\":false,\"accelerated\":true,\"scaling\":\"fit\",\"provider\":\"h264streaming\"},\"canvas\":{\"backgroundColor\":\"0x000000\",\"backgroundGradient\":\"none\"},\"plugins\":{\"audio\":{\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/flow\/flowplayer.audio-3.0.3-dev.swf\"},\"controls\":{\"playlist\":false,\"fullscreen\":true,\"gloss\":\"high\",\"backgroundColor\":\"0x000000\",\"backgroundGradient\":\"medium\",\"sliderColor\":\"0x777777\",\"progressColor\":\"0x777777\",\"timeColor\":\"0xeeeeee\",\"durationColor\":\"0x01DAFF\",\"buttonColor\":\"0x333333\",\"buttonOverColor\":\"0x505050\"},\"h264streaming\":{\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/flow\/flowplayer.h264streaming-3.0.5.swf\"}},\"contextMenu\":[{\"Item InformationM at archive.org\":\"function()\"},\"-\",\"Flowplayer 3.0.5\"]}'> <\/embed><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Willard McCarty on Humanist (Vol. 23, No. 116.) pointed to some early films about computing which are worth looking at. One is \u201cThe Information Machine\u201d from IBM in 1956. It is an animated cartoon which presents the computer in a history of human information invention. It presents three functions for computing: Control or Balance (controlling &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=2548\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Internet Archive: Movies from the History of Computing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foundations-of-computing","category-history-of-computing-and-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2610,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions\/2610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}