Viewing profile — cfmcdonald

This seems like an opportunity to celebrate great children's books created with craft and care by humans. I'll start: John Rocco, How We Got to the Moon . ( http://www.howwegottoth…

While writing this post I actually got an itch to buy a Commodore 64 Ultimate, even though I never owned a Commodore 64 before. (I believe I used one once at friend's house.) Nosta…

I think it's instructive to compare the U.S. and Soviet stances in Europe after WW2. To maintain a military presence in Eastern Europe, the Soviets had to rely on repression, coerc…

This video [0] shows someone using Gopher (and other common pre-web Internet tools) in the early 90s. I used Gopher when I did a high school summer science camp at Indiana Universi…

Yes, I suck at titles. I'm glad you enjoy the blog.

Author of the OP here. The "spray" technique was known in the early 80s, if not earlier. It's mentioned in Michael Tomczyk's "Home Computer Wars": > The solution came in several fo…

I think the GP's point is there is no meaningful nutritional difference between a from-scratch cake and a box cake. Both are pretty unhealthy and should be eaten only as special tr…

It looks like the trend started circa the 1920s in the U.S. Kotex (1920) [0], Kleenex (1924) [1], Kool-Aid (1927) [2], Kool (1933) [3], Krispy Kreme (1934) [4]. Kraft might look li…

Author here. Yes I could be more accurate here. It was called just "Apple Computer" in some contexts, e.g. this ad [0]. This manual calls it "Apple-1" on the cover [1], but "Apple …

Author here. Thank you for the reference, this is very helpful. The name "Colonel Whitney" came from a 1984 Stan Veit article: https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/computer_magazine_…