My favorite documentary of all time. If you are into computers and you have never seen the documentary “The Machine That Changed the World” you need to. It all starts over 150 years ago with a man name Charles Babbage then goes to Germany 100 years later, to the German engineer Konrad Zuse who built the Z1. Then to the US at the University of Pennsylvania, with John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert who built the ENIAC, the first general-purpose computer. From there it is clear sailing in this five part documentary on the history of the computer. From the UNIVAC to the transistor to the integrated circuit through the attempts at IA right down to the first PC and the Apple II then on to Windows and the MAC. They even show the 1984 commercial for the first Macintosh. Since the series was made in 1992 it does not cover the World Wide Web but they put together a wonderful documentary that chronicles the history of the computer to that point.
You may ask where can I get this documentary. Jointly produced by WGBH Boston and the BBC, it originally aired in the UK as The Dream Machine before its U.S. premiere in January 1992. Unfortunately it drifted in to oblivion and is not available for purchase or rental anywhere today.
Thankfully Andy Baio, has pieced together this treasure and has made it available. The complete set is available for download as high-quality MP4 downloads via BitTorrent. Please visit his site at Waxy.org and the post about the The Machine That Changed the World because it gives so much more detail than this post.
Thank You Andy you have saved a treasure.
