103 The Scrappy Origin Story of the Personal Computer | Sean Haas
Curiosityness
Travis DeRose
4.8 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2021
⏱️ 101 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Personal computers are everywhere! When was the last time you even saw a desk without a computer on it?
But how did the personal computer rise up to become so ubiquitous and intertwined with our daily lives?
In this episode I'm joined by Sean Haas, host of the Advent of Computing podcast, for a wild ride through the rise of the personal computer!
Tune in to learn…
-Why computers are just 1's and 0's,
-How Xerox was instrumental in developing the personal computer,
-About the origins of the mouse,
-If Apple stole the idea for the Macintosh,
-Why computers used to be so massive,
-Why the microprocessor was such a breakthrough,
-& so much more!
Check out Sean's podcast, Advent of Computing, wherever you listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Visit https://adventofcomputing.com
Find Sean and Advent of Computing on Twitter: @adventofcomp
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A spontaneous and unrehearsed interview. |
| 0:07.6 | Hello and welcome to the 103rd episode of Curiosityness. |
| 0:14.2 | I'm Travis DeRose, the host, and we're learning about the origin story, the rise of the |
| 0:20.3 | personal computer in this episode. So I have on |
| 0:22.8 | Sean Haas. He is the host of another podcast called The Advent of Computing, which is awesome. |
| 0:29.3 | It's super interesting. So I kind of am like a little techy, not super into it, but I enjoy |
| 0:35.1 | tech and tech news and everything. So I was super excited to come across |
| 0:39.9 | Sean and glad we connected and got to have this conversation and share about this. But this |
| 0:45.4 | episode, we mainly cover the rise of the personal computer. Like how the hell do we have computers |
| 0:52.2 | everywhere? Like, if I didn't have a computer I'd just be |
| 0:55.8 | sitting at a desk with nothing on it all day. I don't even know what I'd be doing. I can't even |
| 1:01.4 | comprehend what life without personal computers would be like they're just so ubiquitous. |
| 1:05.9 | So this is a, that's why we're learning about them because you got to know about where this |
| 1:09.8 | stuff comes from. |
| 1:17.5 | So Sean kind of shares like where they came from, how they started, how they kind of took hold of everything, the major breakthroughs, things like the mouse and the graphical interface and stuff |
| 1:22.0 | like that. And it's, we do it. I think it's done. We do it in kind of a fun way that's easy to understand that I think you'll really enjoy because this was a really fun conversation. And there's a part where Sean tries to explain to me, how computers work with just ones and zeros. I'm pretty dense. It was hard for me to really understand that I just can't super get my head around it, |
| 1:45.5 | but we kind of got to it. So just stick through that part. There's good stuff to be in there. |
| 1:49.9 | So without further ado, let's get to the episode number 103 with Sean of the advent of |
| 1:58.4 | Computing podcast. Sean, hello. Welcome, man. How are you doing? |
| 2:02.6 | I'm doing well. How are you, Travis? |
| 2:04.3 | Doing good. |
| 2:05.4 | Stoke for you to be here. Appreciate it. |
... |
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