Tag Archives: history

Text lasts

October 5th, 2011

Text lasts. It’s not platform-dependant, you don’t just get it from one source, read it in one place, understand it in one way. It is not dependent on technology: it is what we make technology out of. Code is text, it is the fundamental nature of technology. We’ve been trying for decades, since the advent […]

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It’s got dents and burns

July 7th, 2011

You look at the shuttle, it’s not as if it’s this pristine, shining, gleaming piece of metallic technology – it looks like a ship, it’s got dents and burns and inside multiple crews have whacked the paintwork and you can see scratches and things. They are ships that have been operated and lived in and done […]

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A visual history of the credit card

November 24th, 2010

Fascinating insights via this visual history of the credit card from thebigmoney.com. The first bank credit card, the BankAmericard, was unveiled when Bank of America gave out 60,000 unsolicited cards in Fresno, Calif., in 1958. Unlike in the past, when getting a loan might have meant taking a trip to the bank’s basement, this card was a ticket […]

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Looking down the barrel of a gun

October 14th, 2010

Starting when she was 16, Ria van Dijk would go to the fair and play on the shooting gallery. Every time she hit the target a camera was triggered to take a picture, which the shooter would as a prize. “In almost every picture #7″ is the result. A chronological series of shots (pun intended) between 1936 and the […]

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The first digital camera

August 25th, 2010

In December of 1975, after a year of piecing together a bunch of new technology in a back lab at the Elmgrove Plant in Rochester, we were ready to try it. “It” being a rather odd-looking collection of digital circuits that we desperately tried to convince ourselves was a portable camera. The story behind the world’s first digital camera

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