Ran across a little gem today.

I found all five parts of The Machine That Changed World. It’s a five part PBS series, first aired back in 1992, all about the history of computing from Charles Babbage’s difference engine, the ENIAC, UNIVAC, the rise of IBM, Apple, and Microsoft, and on up to the early dial-up BBS’s and the internet.

It was fun to see a more expanded history of some of the things we talk about here in the computer history segment of the TGT podcast.

Each episode is about an hour, and I just watched all five of them this afternoon (And that will explain my lack of preparation for recording the show tonight). I watched the first one and was just riveted. I couldn’t stop until I had seen all of them.

If you have any interest in computer history at all, or even computers in general, I suggest you watch all of them. You will not be disappointed.

Part 1: Great Brains

Part 2: Inventing the Future

Part 3: The Paperback Computer

Part 4: The Thinking Machine

Part 5: The World at Your Fingertips

Torrent of all five episodes together.