How the ARPANET Protocols Worked
An ascent through the four levels of the ARPANET protocol hierarchy.
Two-Bit History
A Jekyll blog about the history of computing
Latest posts
The Real Novelty of the ARPANET
The ARPANET made its splashy public debut in 1972. Why exactly was it such a big deal?
Roy Fielding’s Misappropriated REST Dissertation
Can history help us make sense of the term 'RESTful API'?
How to Use a Differential Analyzer (to Murder People)
Solving differential equations with an analog computer for dummies.
Bulletin Board Systems: The VICE Exposé
These underground digital meetinghouses have been operating since the '80s. Who uses them and why?
Friend of a Friend: The Facebook That Could Have Been
Why didn't the FOAF standard give us distributed social networking in the 2000s?
How Much of a Genius-Level Move Was Using Binary Space Partitioning in Doom?
A short history of the data structure that powered the classic first-person shooter.
Things You Didn’t Know About GNU Readline
What is GNU Readline and where did it come from?
Codecademy vs. The BBC Micro
In 1981, the BBC set out to educate Great Britain about computers. It did a really good job.
OOP Before OOP with Simula
Early versions of Simula experimented with an entirely different kind of object-oriented programming.