Digital History on Kind of Idea

A Brief History of the Internet

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A Brief History of the Internet by Walt Howe
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at www.walthowe.com.

The modern Internet, as we use it today and based on the TCP/IP protocol, turned 30 on January 1, 2013. In 1981, DARPA began testing the protocol to connect its networks. On January 1, 1983, the lab’s 400 servers, which were based on the NCP protocol, were shut down and the system migrated to TCP/IP, giving rise to today’s Internet. To mark this historic date, I translated this short text, which tells the story of the Internet in an accessible way and focuses not only on the technology but also on the people involved. You can find the original text by Walt Howe here. Here is the translation.

The First Robot (translation)

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The original text was written by Dan Wohlbruck and can be found here.

It happened in September 1928

Dan Wohlbruck adds to his “When Did This Happen?” series of essays about the first human-looking robot. He reports, surprisingly, that “Eric was a simple and successful substitute for the Duke of York.”

On September 20, 1928, Eric, the first human-looking robot, opened the Society of Model Engineers Exhibition in London. Captain William Richards, a journalist and World War I veteran, and A. H. Reffell, an engineer, were the inventors. Captain Richards was inspired to build Eric when the Duke of York, who had been invited to open the exhibition, was unable to attend the ceremony. Eric’s presentation is described on the cyberneticzoo.com website as follows: