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
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 HNTRON Smart House
1 mo on HN"Silicon Valley Story" — a Very Short Romantic Comedy by Ted Nelson
1 mo on HNSGI's $250,000 Graphics Supercomputer from 1993 - Silicon Graphics Onyx RealityEngine²
1 mo on HNXerox Star User Interface (1982) 1 of 2
1 mo on HNKirk McKusick - A Narrative History of BSD
1 mo on HNMacintosh Factory
1 mo on HNOral History of William David "Bill" Mensch Jr.
1 mo on HNYesterday's Computer of Tomorrow: The Xerox Alto │Smalltalk-76 Demo
1 mo on HNBrian Kernighan: UNIX, C, AWK, AMPL, and Go Programming | Lex Fridman Podcast #109
1 mo on HNSymbolicsTalk28June2012
1 mo on HNBill Atkinson: Polaroids showing the Evolution of the Lisa GUI
1 mo on HN1994: "Today Show": "What is the Internet, Anyway?"
1 mo on HNDouglas Engelbart Interviewed by John Markoff of the New York Times
1 mo on HNTypesetters in the '80s - Computerphile
1 mo on HNGrace Hopper Lecture
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 HNDEC LAB-8/e (PDP-8/e) playing music
1 mo on HN1979: Will WORD PROCESSORS start a HOME WORKING revolution? | Past Predictions | BBC Archive
1 mo on HNHow Japan Learned Semiconductors
1 mo on HNComputers for Cynics 2 - It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC
1 mo on HNJames Gosling - Simula: a personal journey
1 mo on HNBeOS Demo Video
1 mo on HNWhy the Soviet Computer Failed
1 mo on HNTomorrow's World: Nellie the School Computer 15 February 1969 - BBC
1 mo on HNPaul Otlet, visioning a web in 1934
1 mo on HNCanon Cat
1 mo on HNThe Computer Programme (1): It's Happening Now (Introduction to Computing)
1 mo on HNDavid Patterson - A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture: History, Challenges and Opportunities
1 mo on HNEdsger Dijkstra interview
1 mo on HNLamport on writing "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System"
1 mo on HNThe Dial Comes To Town
1 mo on HNVCF East: Xerox Star vs. Apple Lisa
1 mo on HNMaking Money Flow: The MONIAC
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