Resources - Videos

Digital: From The Beginning, 19 minutes, Digital Equipment Corporation.

Ken Olsen, President of Digital Equipment Corporation, talks about the history of the company, which helped create world's early computer industry.

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	Descriptions of the videos are provided by the publishers. Video titles are linked to publishers, online bookstores, or other history of computing websites where more information is available.

	The Machine That Changed the World, WGBH Education Foundation, 1992. The series includes five videos. Vol.1, Giant Brain, tells the story of the birth of computers and of the men and women who assisted in that birth: Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Herman Goldstine, John Mauchly, Ada Lovelave and J. Presper Eckert. Vol.2, The Thinking Machine, is devoted to artificial intelligence, and what computer scientists, psychologists and philosophers have learned about human intelligence in the process of trying to teach computers to think. Vol.3, Inventing the Future, chronicles the rough times experienced by the computer pioneers, until the industry took off and changed the way the world does business. The program covers the invention of programming languages, and the hardware revolution that made computers smaller and cheaper and ultimately led to personal computers. Vol.4, The world at Your Fingertips, looks at the social revolution wrought by computers, and at what price: the disappearance of place as an attribute, the loss of privacy, the pollution of information and the near-catastrophes that can occur when computer networks take on a life of their own. Vol.5, The Paperback Computers, shows how room-sized number crunchers evolved into easy-to-use desktop machines. It also covers the development of microprocessors, the trailblazing of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniac and Michael Markkula, and the arrial of a new generation for whom computers are not a machine at all, but a new medium.

	Computer Pioneers and Pioneer Computers, 54 minutes, The Computer Museum, 1996. A two part program on the evolution of electronic computing from its pre-WWII origins through the development of the first commercial computers. In Vol.1, the builders of the first five machines, the Bell Labs Model 1, the Zuse Z1-3, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the Harvard Mark 1, and the SSEC, tell their story. Vol.2 focus on the ENIAC, the EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC, EDSAC, and IAS machines, etc.

	Digital: From The Beginning, 19 minutes, Digital Equipment Corporation. Ken Olsen, President of Digital Equipment Corporation, talks about the history of the company, which helped create world's early computer industry.

	Triumph of the Nerds: An Irreverent History of the PC Industry, New York: Ambrose Video Publishing, Inc., 1996. A witty and original history of the personal computer industry and its creators, based on the best selling book, Accidental Empire. Vol.1: Bob Cringely, Silicon Valley and some spectacularly successful nerds. Intel. Enter Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Steve Wozniak spawns Apple II. The imminent arrival of IBM. Vol.2: IBM decisoin - "buy not build" PC technology. The tiny software company named Microsoft. Microsoft and IBM co-operates, and split. IBM launches OS/2 and Microsoft comes up with Windows. Vol. 3: Window 95. Satellite links. Jay Leno introducing Bill Gates, the richest man in the world. Xerox PARC adopted by Steve Jobs for Macintosh. Jobs fired by the man he hired. Making PCs more friendly with GUI. The Internet.

	Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet, 3 hours, Warner Home Videos, 1998. In this three-part series, Robert Cringely takes you on a journey through the Internet. You will hear from industry big-wigs such as Marc Andreessen, Steve Case, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Bob Metcalfe, etc. Filled with humor, wit, inside gossip, and hard facts.

	Modern Marvels: The Internet: Behind the Web, 50 minutes, A&E Television Netwoks, 1996. In this program, Vinton Cerf, Stephen Croker, Robert Metcalfe and other Internet pioneers talk about where the Internet came from, how it started, who built it and where it is going. You will also learn about how the Internet works with TCP/IP, package switching and time sharing.

	Breaking the Code, 90 minutes, Anchor Bay Entertainments, Inc., 1997. A feature film telling the story of mathematical genius Alan Turing, who designed the computer that cracked the German Enigma code and enabled the allies to win the World War II.

	A Science Odessey, 5 tapes, PBS Home Videos, 1997. Part 4, "Bigger, Better, Faster" introduces viewers to the inventors, entrepreneurs and industrial scientists whose work fueled the 20th century's technological revolution.

	Transistorized!, 60 minutes, PBS Home Videos, 1999. Chronicles the invention of transistor in a compelling tale of top secret research, brilliant insight, clashing egos, and tragic human failings. It recaptures key moments in the history of the transistor, and shows how it revolutionized 20th century technology and gave birth to the Information Age.

	The Telephone, 60 minutes. PBS Home Video, 1997. Tells the story of an invention that forever changed the way the world interacts. Using never-before-seen still photographs, archival sound and film footage to evoke a sense of the nation at the turn of the twentieth century, it conveys the power of the invention and its dramatic impact on American life.

	Big Dream: Small Screen, 60 minutes, PBS Home Video, 1997. Tells the little known story of Philo T. Farnsworth, an inventive genius who fulfilled his dream of harnessing the electron to transmit images.