Pioneers in Tech: Dorothy Vaughn, one of the women of Apollo
The woman who became NASA’s first Black manager was honored in July with the renaming of a central building at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Learn all about her trailblazing career in this edition of Pioneers in Tech! On...
Tech Time Warp: Back to school and back to hacks
Now that we are past Labor Day, school is back in session across the United States—which means summer vacation is over for cybercriminals, too. Let’s dive into this week’s edition of Tech Time Warp. The education sector is increasingly a...
Tech Time Warp: Bidding adieu to AppleTalk
Fifteen years ago, Apple quietly discontinued one of its innovations from the 1980s: the AppleTalk networking protocol. When Apple released Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), it ended support for its proprietary local area networking system, moving fully to TCP/IP-based...
Tech Time Warp: Have you ever wondered about the history of cut, copy, and paste?
For many of us, using the keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy, and paste is as second nature as flipping a light switch. Whether you’re a Mac (Command-) or a PC (Ctrl+) user, these shortcuts make life easier and word processing...
Tech Time Warp: Reflecting on the Ken Thompson hack
In 1983, Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie received the prestigious A.M. Turing Award for “their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system.” However, this look back at technology history is...
Pioneers in Tech: How Barbara Liskov revolutionized computer science
After earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1961 from the University of California, Berkeley, Barbara Liskov applied to graduate school at Princeton University. In response to her application, Liskov received a form letter informing her the school didn’t accept...
Tech Time Warp: The golden age of Minitel
With all eyes on Paris thanks to the 2024 Summer Olympics, it makes sense to turn our attention to a uniquely French chapter in technology history: the Minitel. You may remember this innovation from your French language textbook, much like...
Tech Time Warp: A look back at Olympics technology innovation
The 2024 Paris Olympics is already being hailed as groundbreaking in the use of artificial intelligence to protect athletes from online abuse and answer their questions quickly via an exclusive AthleteGPT service. But, as you will see in this edition...
Tech Time Warp: Fond memories of the Famicom
Whether gamers or not, the NES, or Nintendo Entertainment System console, is ubiquitous with childhood for Americans who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. But casual observers may not know that before Nintendo brought the NES to the American...
Pioneers in Tech: Nikola Tesla’s vision for wireless communication
This edition of Pioneers in Tech looks at the legend of Nikola Tesla—not only do electric cars bear his name, but also his alternating-current (AC) electric system remains the basis of electricity today. Plus, the “Tesla coil” he invented is...
