History of computing Videos Recommended on Hacker News (188)
History of computing is one of the 150 topics Hacker News readers organize their video recommendations around. These 188 videos each earned real recommendations in real HN threads between 2007 and 2026 — 537 recommendations in total — and they're ranked by how many separate months the community kept coming back to them, not by view count.
Computing history: early computers, mainframes, Bletchley Park, ENIAC, Xerox PARC, Unix history, minicomputers, personal computer revolution, historical lectures and museum restorations.
Why HN keeps sending people here — on AT&T Archives: Similiarities of Wave Behavior (Bonus Edition): “By far the best introduction to the subject of waves of any sort.” — an HN commenter, 2019.
Type
TalkLectureDocumentaryExplainerDemoTutorialInterviewCommentaryComedyMusicPodcastsNews & reportingCoursesFeatures
Evergreen only
11 mo on HNBret Victor The Future of Programming
11 mo on HNAlan Kay - Normal Considered Harmful
7 mo on HN34C3 - The Ultimate Apollo Guidance Computer Talk
7 mo on HNAlan Kay, 2015: Power of Simplicity
4 mo on HNThe Web That Never Was - Dylan Beattie
5 mo on HN2 1 1 Jason Scott Rescuing The Prince of Persia from the sands of time
4 mo on HN"A Political History of X" - Keith Packard (LCA 2020)
4 mo on HNJoe Armstrong - Keynote: The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science - Code BEAM SF 2018
4 mo on HNKeynote: Begin...End?
3 mo on HNARCHIVE TEAM: A Distributed Preservation of Service Attack
3 mo on HNA Narrative History of BSD, Dr. Kirk McKusick
3 mo on HN"Uptime 15,364 days - The Computers of Voyager" by Aaron Cummings
2 mo on HN50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
3 mo on HNJoe Armstrong & Jeremy Ruston - Intertwingling the Tiddlywiki with Erlang | Code Mesh LDN 18
2 mo on HNComputer Science - A Guide for the Perplexed • Joe Armstrong • GOTO 2018
2 mo on HNDEF CON 18 - Jason Scott - You're Stealing It Wrong! 30 Years of Inter-Pirate Battles
2 mo on HN"How to Think about Parallel Programming: Not!" - Guy L. Steele Jr. (Strange Loop 2010)
2 mo on HNHere I Stand, at Age 80
2 mo on HNThe Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer - Brian Troutwine
2 mo on HNHere's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe
1 mo on HNSteve Jobs rare footage conducting a presentation on 1980 (Insanely Great)
1 mo on HNThe Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet OOPSLA 97 Keynote (VPRI 0719)
1 mo on HNSeymour Cray's Only Surviving Talk: "Cray-1 Introduction" (1976, LANL)
1 mo on HNTed Nelson's Eulogy for Douglas Engelbart
1 mo on HNA Brief History of the BSD Fast Filesystem by Marshall Kirk McKusick
1 mo on HNSteve Jobs Introduces the Macintosh
1 mo on HNPlan 9: Not dead, Just Resting, by Ori Bernstein
1 mo on HNCharles Babbage and Difference Enginge No. 2 | Doron Swade | Talks at Google
1 mo on HNKirk McKusick - A Narrative History of BSD
1 mo on HNSymbolicsTalk28June2012
1 mo on HNThe History of Unix, Rob Pike
1 mo on HNA History of The ARM Microprocessor | Dave Jaggar | Talks at Google
1 mo on HNJames Gosling - Simula: a personal journey
1 mo on HNDavid Patterson - A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture: History, Challenges and Opportunities
1 mo on HNVCF East: Xerox Star vs. Apple Lisa
1 mo on HNInventing the Computer Mouse | Douglas Engelbart | Talks at Google
Also discussed on Hacker News (43)
Mentioned in HN threads about history of computing, though never formally recommended:
1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial (HD) · Lucid Energize Demo VHS 1993 · Automatic Hamburger Machine - 50 Years Ahead of Its Time! · The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer · Steve Jobs - NeXT marketing strategy video 1991 · Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together at D5 Conference 2007 · Xerox Star User Interface (1982) 2 of 2 · The IBM 1401 makes "music" · Ernst Dickmanns’ VaMoRs Mercedes Van, 1986-2003 · GE Walking Truck - Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine (CAM) 1969. · The Machine to Build the Machines - NeXT · Xerox Star User Interface: An overview · ALAIN COLMERAUER L'AVENTURE PROLOG · Flashback! The Internet In 1995 | Archives | TODAY · 1968 “Mother of All Demos” by SRI’s Doug Engelbart and Team · Bill Gates demonstrates Visual Basic (1991) · Bill Gates, Windows 98, Blue Screen of Death · How Steve Jobs got the ideas of GUI from XEROX · Apple - 1984 · The Computer Chronicles - The Internet (1993) · Oral History of Bjarne Stroustrup · Why You Can't Name A File CON In Windows · An Earthshaking Announcement · Bill Gates explains this “internet” thing #letterman · Mercury-Redstone 1 Launch failure (MR-1) · Upgrading From Windows 1.0 to Windows 8 On Actual Hardware · SGI IRIS 2400 (1985) · Etak Navigator Tour & Demo · LGR Oddware - MiniDisc Data Storage: Sony MDH-10 · The Computer Designed To Die In Microseconds · KIDS REACT TO OLD COMPUTERS · The Voder: 1939, the worlds first electronic voice synthesizer · The Editor of a Lifetime · Apple II Forever · The World Premiere of the Amiga (1985, Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry) · Penn and Teller's Lab Scam · Introduction to Microsoft Excel 1990 with Jan Brehm · Oral History of Steve Naroff Part 1, Session 1 · Symbolics Space Cadet keyboard review (Honeywell Hall effect 4B3E) · LilithComdexDemo · Steve Jobs The Lost Interview · Microsoft Windows 1.0 with Steve Ballmer (1986) · Tomorrow's World: Mobile Phone 13 September 1979 - BBC