| I think the best way to learn this stuff is from the people who did it, speaking in their own words. But watching videos takes forever, so the best way to do this is to read oral histories. The Computer History Museum has really great content-- I've read dozens of these. You can easily find them, ranking in approximate order of popularity, with the following google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=oral+history+computer+museum... To find more (and there are many great ones outside of the Museum), you can try a broader search: https://www.google.com/search?q=oral+history+arpa+filetype%3... I have found that I can read around 3-5x faster than listening to people talk, depending on the speed of the speaker (most of the people interviewed in these oral histories are quite old and can speak a bit slower), and I also retain the information much better. There is something about reading an actual conversation by someone who was there when this stuff was being invented (or literally invented it themselves) that you don't get from reading a retrospective historical account, and it makes the information stick with you more, since it's all framed in stories and personal accounts. Some favorites: https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/107503/oh... https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/107247/oh... https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Hist... http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo... https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/107613/oh... https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/valenti... https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/107642/oh... There are so many other good ones, but that's a good start! |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVRytYSTEk
The transcript is here:
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10273824...
Highly entertaining life story of the woman who managed the flight software for the Apollo Guidance Computer.