87: With a Name Like Deke...

00:00SPEAKERWell, I've got good news for you, OK?

00:02SPEAKERContrary to what I thought a couple of weeks ago, I have not, in fact,

00:07SPEAKERactually threatened to kill anyone on the Internet to date.

00:09SPEAKERAs far as I know, where you talk about your kill file, maybe I look.

00:15SPEAKERSometimes we talk about things and I'm like, I would like to know more about this.

00:18SPEAKERAnd sometimes we talk about them

00:19SPEAKERand I'm like, I'm just going to move on and pretend that we never talked about that.

00:22SPEAKEROh, man. So you're talking about your I.R.C.

00:26SPEAKERkill file? So, yeah, a couple was it the last patron episode we did?

00:31SPEAKERThat seems right. A couple of weeks ago, time has no meaning.

00:34SPEAKERYeah, the last patron episode we did, we've very painfully dug

00:37SPEAKERinto our posts history on Usenet and the ARS forums

00:41SPEAKERand some other places from twenty, twenty five years ago.

00:45SPEAKERYeah. If you're thinking about doing that yourself, dolt.

00:48SPEAKERI found I found a new source of that information later.

00:52SPEAKERWhat was it? I can't say without it becoming apparent where it comes from.

00:55SPEAKERSo that's sensitive, huh?

00:58SPEAKERWe're not we're not going to talk about it, though.

00:59SPEAKERHot post material. Five thousand patrons.

01:02SPEAKERThat's the episode. Wow. OK, well, that means it's at least fit for public consumption.

01:07SPEAKERIt wasn't bad. It wasn't it wasn't anything awful.

01:09SPEAKERIt was just embarrassed.

01:10SPEAKERReally, really embarrassing. Not ruin your career bad.

01:13SPEAKERNo, no, no. OK, OK.

01:15SPEAKERAnyway, we were going through old Usenet posts for that patron episode,

01:18SPEAKERand I had one that I was going to read and you chickened out.

01:23SPEAKERWell, I think you also advised me not to read it

01:25SPEAKERbecause I thought it was me threatening to kill someone.

01:28SPEAKERGo ahead and read the post, Brad.

01:30SPEAKEROK, here we go.

01:31SPEAKERLet's see in Alt.Games.Final Fantasy on September 19th, 1997.

01:37SPEAKERYou know, in the alt newsgroups, anything goes, Brad.

01:40SPEAKERLet's see in response to somebody who spoiled wild arms,

01:43SPEAKERthe JRPG for the PlayStation in some fashion.

01:47SPEAKERI think he talked about somebody dying or something.

01:50SPEAKERAnyway, my response to this person.

01:53SPEAKERThank you so very fucking much.

01:55SPEAKERI haven't finished Wild Arms yet, and now I don't even know if I'll bother.

01:59SPEAKERIf I had a kill file, you'd top the list.

02:03SPEAKERNineties, Brad voice is my favorite.

02:05SPEAKEROh, boy, man, you sound so self-entitled anyway.

02:09SPEAKERWell, dude, he fucked up like are you a spoiler guy?

02:11SPEAKERVideo games were expensive.

02:12SPEAKERThis was ninety six, man.

02:15SPEAKERI'm sorry. Ninety seven.

02:16SPEAKERThis was like, God, this wasn't even an heiress dies territory yet, was it?

02:19SPEAKERIt was like months before that. Right. So, OK.

02:22SPEAKERI'm trying to remember the timeline.

02:24SPEAKERThat's right around the time Final Fantasy seven came out.

02:26SPEAKERRight. So like spoilers were the thing back then.

02:28SPEAKERRight. Like heiress dies was the proto spoiler.

02:31SPEAKERI just on Usenet is heiress dies a Final Fantasy seven thing. Yes.

02:36SPEAKERIt was it was unthinkable that they would kill off a main party member like that.

02:40SPEAKERAnd yet people ran around all over the Internet shouting it from the rooftops.

02:43SPEAKERSo I just played Final Fantasy seven for the first time.

02:47SPEAKERWait with the remake. I never played it before. Wait, did I?

02:52SPEAKERSo spoilers, I guess, Brad, did I just spoil heiress dies for you?

02:56SPEAKERI had no idea what that meant.

02:58SPEAKEROh, my God. So sorry.

03:00SPEAKERHey, and in twenty, twenty seven, when the next installment of that remake

03:03SPEAKERcomes out, buckle up. Some shit's going to go down.

03:06SPEAKERYeah, if if they ever release that, it'll be very exciting for me.

03:09SPEAKERSo I did. I really in twenty twenty one just spoil heiress dies for somebody.

03:13SPEAKERI had no idea. Excuse me, heiress dies.

03:15SPEAKERYeah, heiress dies. Yes.

03:17SPEAKERAnyway, she's my favorite. She really dies.

03:19SPEAKERDude, I've got bad news for you. I cannot believe this just happened.

03:23SPEAKERFuck. I didn't even get to the point where I explained what the kill file

03:30SPEAKERactually is. We should explain what the kill file is.

03:31SPEAKERSo people don't think you're your teen self was a nascent murderer.

03:34SPEAKERYou're probably OK.

03:35SPEAKERI paused there because I seemed like a good place to end that cold open.

03:38SPEAKERSo anyway, like randomly a week or two ago after we did that episode,

03:42SPEAKERI somehow stumbled on the fact that a kill file on Usenet

03:45SPEAKERwas actually like a filter, like a text based filter that you kept.

03:48SPEAKERYeah. So that's what you told the cops.

03:50SPEAKERLike any any names like terms and subject lines, like any, you know,

03:53SPEAKERfiltering mechanisms you put in that kill file.

03:55SPEAKERIt would just weed out those posts.

03:56SPEAKERYeah. Yeah, it would weed them out if you know what I mean.

04:00SPEAKERYes. Cut them down to size.

04:03SPEAKERYeah. Happy Final Fantasy Guy 69 is sleeping with the fishes, Brad.

04:06SPEAKERThat's what I'm saying.

04:07SPEAKERPut out a hit on any post mentioning the term Eryth, for example.

04:11SPEAKERAnyway, I just want to clear the air between you and me and now the world

04:14SPEAKERthat I wasn't as far as I know today, still death threat free on the Internet for me.

04:20SPEAKERWell, I know what I'm putting on my kill file now, Brad.

04:44SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made at Techbot, I'm Will.

04:55SPEAKERI'm Brad. I'm still sorry.

04:57SPEAKERSpoiler free since 2021, baby.

05:00SPEAKERYeah, that's right. Start the clock over.

05:02SPEAKERI don't I don't. It's funny.

05:03SPEAKERIt has been zero days since we spoiled Final Fantasy seven on this podcast.

05:07SPEAKERWell, so here's the weird thing.

05:09SPEAKERLike I have a weird relationship with spoilers because like

05:11SPEAKERI saw Return of the Jedi before I saw Empire Strikes Back. OK.

05:15SPEAKERJust because there was no home video back then.

05:17SPEAKERAnd like you didn't you didn't like I read the novelization

05:22SPEAKERof Empire Strikes Back probably before I saw the movie.

05:25SPEAKEROh, gosh, I just realized, as we will get into on this very episode,

05:28SPEAKERI guess you were old enough to kind of remember how those movies rolled out.

05:30SPEAKERRight. As opposed to like to me, they're all just like

05:33SPEAKERI think my parents took me to Return of the Jedi as like a four year old.

05:36SPEAKERBut to me, they're all just a mashup of things I saw on home video. Right.

05:39SPEAKERBut you actually you actually saw them and remember them.

05:42SPEAKERWell, so for me, CBS aired Star Wars

05:45SPEAKERlike on primetime TV one year, and we recorded it off of the TV.

05:49SPEAKERLike I still remember where the ad breaks in Star Wars were. Wow.

05:52SPEAKERLike when the job well raises its arms in the sand person raises arms.

05:57SPEAKERThat's when that's when the first ad break was.

05:59SPEAKERThat's a good cliffhanger. Yeah.

06:03SPEAKERThe that whole so I saw that I saw Return of the Jedi in theaters,

06:07SPEAKERbut I was too young to see Empire when I was six.

06:10SPEAKERAnd so and I probably wouldn't remember it anyway.

06:12SPEAKERSo I had no idea.

06:14SPEAKERLike it comes in and like all of a sudden Luke and Leia are siblings.

06:18SPEAKERI was like, what? What the hell's going on here?

06:20SPEAKERThis is really weird. Anyway.

06:23SPEAKERThat's the that's my Star Wars cliffhanger thing.

06:25SPEAKERI didn't see the Empire until I was like 10, probably till like 85.

06:30SPEAKERYeah. When it came out on video.

06:31SPEAKERWell, spoiler warning. That's all I can say.

06:34SPEAKERIt's just nothing but spoilers here this this week. That's right.

06:37SPEAKERSome hot 1975 bangers.

06:39SPEAKERI mean, it is 1975 was an important year for me.

06:41SPEAKERIt turns out it's a fine vintage for you and also science and technology.

06:46SPEAKERIt seems this this episode was a suggestion by

06:51SPEAKERyour your partner. Yes. Yes. Yes. OK. Girlfriend. Yes.

06:57SPEAKERAnd I think it seemed like it seemed like fun.

06:59SPEAKERSo here we are going to do it. What are we doing this week?

07:01SPEAKERI had a really morose idea for this week that didn't feel great.

07:04SPEAKERAnd then she was like, can we just say it?

07:07SPEAKERIt's your birthday. Hey, happy birthday, Will.

07:09SPEAKERHey, thanks, man. Yeah.

07:10SPEAKERAnd I mentioned to her that it was that we were going to be recording on your birthday.

07:13SPEAKERAnd she was like, she was like,

07:14SPEAKERwhy don't you go through all the tech that happened in the year he was born?

07:17SPEAKERAnd it turned out to be a really important year for technology.

07:20SPEAKERAnd then we pulled up a timeline and like, holy crap.

07:23SPEAKERLike, what a what a fine vintage you are.

07:27SPEAKERIt seems I was born in 1975. Yeah.

07:30SPEAKERWhich was not the year we make contact, but it was close to it, I guess.

07:35SPEAKERI don't know how we should do this.

07:36SPEAKERMaybe we got stuff arranged into a loose order here, kind of.

07:41SPEAKERYeah, to some degree.

07:42SPEAKERSo we kind of the way we came up with this list of things is we hit

07:45SPEAKERlike the the Wikipedia list for stuff that happened in technology

07:48SPEAKERand stuff that happened in 1975.

07:50SPEAKERAnd then we dug a little deeper onto some of it.

07:53SPEAKERI think there's probably at least one or maybe two more episodes.

07:57SPEAKERI think that will come out of things that we're going to talk about here.

07:59SPEAKERIf I have to guess that's very given the amount of time we spent on YouTube

08:02SPEAKERwatching people work in Altair 8800.

08:05SPEAKERI'm so curious.

08:06SPEAKERI don't I don't know if I'm like extremely curious

08:09SPEAKERor if I can never watch any of that again.

08:11SPEAKERLike it's it's a lot.

08:12SPEAKERI kind of want to load up the core because there's a Mr.

08:15SPEAKERCore for the 8800.

08:16SPEAKEROf course, because like it's such an early computer,

08:18SPEAKERthere aren't really games for it.

08:19SPEAKERSo I was like, no, there won't be a Mr. Core, but of course there is.

08:22SPEAKERYeah. Yeah. And I believe the output, the video output of that Mr.

08:25SPEAKERCore is just the front panel of that thing,

08:27SPEAKERwhich is covered in lights and toggle switches.

08:30SPEAKERDo I have to get a serial port for my Mr. in order to use it?

08:32SPEAKERYou absolutely can do legitimate serial output

08:35SPEAKERfrom the 8800 core on the Mr. from the GPIO pins.

08:39SPEAKEROK, so well, so let's start at the beginning.

08:41SPEAKERSo the first thing on our list, and I think this is probably

08:44SPEAKERarguably the most important thing that happened from like.

08:47SPEAKERWell, maybe there's some bangers on here.

08:50SPEAKERWell, like from a computing perspective, though, I think this was the big one.

08:55SPEAKERThe Altair 8800 came out in January.

08:57SPEAKERI know nothing about this computer.

08:59SPEAKERI didn't really either.

09:00SPEAKERI've heard the name for years as an important milestone in computing history,

09:03SPEAKERbut I didn't really know exactly what it was or why it happened.

09:05SPEAKERBut I think right off the bat, the funniest thing about it is

09:10SPEAKERI think it was both revealed and launched in January in an issue of Popular Mechanics.

09:14SPEAKERIt was Popular Electronics, I thought.

09:17SPEAKERYou might be right, actually.

09:19SPEAKERLet me pull up that page.

09:21SPEAKERPopular Electronics was affiliated with Popular Mechanics.

09:25SPEAKERI think eventually it all got merged in.

09:27SPEAKERThey also became popular.

09:28SPEAKERYou're right, it was Popular Electronics.

09:31SPEAKERBut but yeah, this is the computer.

09:33SPEAKERIf you've ever seen pictures of old computers, this is the one that

09:36SPEAKERthey is widely credited with kicking off the microprocessor revolution.

09:40SPEAKERWe ran an 8080 Intel 8080 chip, which was the kind of first semi x86.

09:47SPEAKERYeah, not really.

09:49SPEAKERI think it was kind of the first pre x86 chip is an 8-bit Intel CPU.

09:52SPEAKERAnd then the 8086 came along, which was their 16-bit chip that kind of,

09:56SPEAKERyou know, kicked off x86.

09:57SPEAKERBut the thing I read is that they required that the x that the 8086 be 8080 compatible.

10:04SPEAKERYeah, of course.

10:04SPEAKERMeaning meaning that elements of that 8-bit 8080 have trickled down

10:07SPEAKERlike all the way to today.

10:09SPEAKERYou're saying that there's a little piece of that computer deep,

10:12SPEAKERvery deep in the heart of my CPU.

10:14SPEAKERThere's a little 8080.

10:15SPEAKERThere's a little Altair 8080.

10:17SPEAKERThere's too many 88, and I can't keep these all straight.

10:20SPEAKERAltair 8800.

10:21SPEAKERThere's a little bit of that in all of us.

10:23SPEAKERBut so at this point, there's already two things

10:25SPEAKERthat are really interesting to me about this one.

10:27SPEAKEROK, so this is the computer that has just a bunch of red LEDs and switches on the front.

10:30SPEAKERYeah, like you should go if you don't know what this thing looks like,

10:32SPEAKERyou should go Google a picture because it's not even like

10:35SPEAKERas far as primitive computers go, it's not even an IBM PC or Apple to style computer.

10:40SPEAKERIt looks like a piece of equipment from Apollo mission control.

10:43SPEAKERYeah, it looks like a stare.

10:44SPEAKERIt's it's the reason and watching videos about this and learning a little bit about this.

10:48SPEAKERI understand why people were excited because I guess prior to this point,

10:51SPEAKERif you wanted to buy a computer for home use or like small office use

10:55SPEAKERlike the smallest thing you could get was like the size of a refrigerator, right?

10:59SPEAKERI had like big tape, paper, tape machines and a bunch of blinky lights,

11:02SPEAKERand it was huge and probably required like a lot of power, right?

11:07SPEAKERYeah, but the front of this thing is like it is the most 70s

11:10SPEAKERdesign aesthetic looking thing I have ever seen.

11:12SPEAKEROh, it is nothing but red LEDs and big rugged metal toggle switches that you work.

11:18SPEAKERLike I think you're like literally

11:20SPEAKERchecking memory addresses by flipping switches on the front of this thing, right?

11:24SPEAKERThat's basically how you operate it.

11:25SPEAKERI mean, it also monitor optional or maybe not even available at release.

11:29SPEAKERLike it was a teletype machine.

11:31SPEAKERSo you were spitting the output onto like paper tape and using a keyboard that way.

11:35SPEAKERWell, onto onto printouts.

11:37SPEAKERBut but it did have paper tape.

11:39SPEAKERIt had a 9600 baud paper tape reader to hook up to it.

11:42SPEAKERSorry. Yeah, yeah.

11:43SPEAKERLike a dot matrix paper feed is what I meant.

11:45SPEAKERYeah, well, but a teletype is different than that.

11:47SPEAKERA teletype is a two way thing.

11:49SPEAKERIt just uses a big roll of paper as the output is my understanding.

11:53SPEAKERInstead of a screen.

11:54SPEAKERBut like if you type into it, it types onto the paper.

11:57SPEAKERBut the machine also knows what you typed.

11:59SPEAKERRight. So like you could you could type in it.

12:02SPEAKERAnd this was also this computer is also interesting

12:04SPEAKERbecause it's the first Microsoft product.

12:07SPEAKERLike basic for this computer was the first Microsoft.

12:10SPEAKERSo, yeah, skipping ahead like a handful of months from January,

12:13SPEAKERthe founding of a company called Micro Dash Soft

12:17SPEAKERwith capital S was the original name of Microsoft founded by Bill Gates.

12:22SPEAKERAlbuquerque. Yeah. So the the Altair 8800 came out of Albuquerque.

12:26SPEAKERIt was actually designed by military engineers.

12:29SPEAKERYou know, that makes sense.

12:30SPEAKERPeople from Los Alamos.

12:31SPEAKERYeah, it was it was a some some Air Force engineers

12:35SPEAKERafter they got out of the service, founded this company and built the Altair.

12:38SPEAKERAnd then Microsoft was founded to offer Altair basic for that machine.

12:42SPEAKERThe the other thing that's amazing to me about this computer

12:45SPEAKERthat I didn't really appreciate is that at that point in time,

12:48SPEAKERthe hoist of magazines was enough.

12:51SPEAKERLike the lift of a magazine was enough that they would commission somebody

12:54SPEAKERto design a computer that would be sent mail order.

12:57SPEAKERSo so that was the thing I didn't finish saying earlier is not only

13:00SPEAKERwas it revealed on the cover of that issue of Popular Electronics,

13:03SPEAKERit was also sold out of the back of that same issue like.

13:08SPEAKERYeah, mail order hobbyist.

13:09SPEAKERI mean, this thing was extremely specialized equipment, right?

13:11SPEAKEREven if it was generally available,

13:13SPEAKERit was like you needed to really know your stuff to use this thing.

13:15SPEAKERBut I just think it's funny that like product revealed in magazine

13:18SPEAKERthat also sold in magazine at the same time, by the way.

13:21SPEAKERWell, how much did it cost, Brad?

13:23SPEAKERI've got the price list in front of me.

13:26SPEAKERLet me pull that up here.

13:27SPEAKERSo it's this this table is broken down.

13:29SPEAKERI was not super familiar with these terms.

13:32SPEAKERThe kit price of an Altair 8800 was four hundred and thirty nine dollars.

13:36SPEAKERThat's it. I mean, it's 1975, so it's like, yeah, it's like two grand now,

13:40SPEAKERbut three grand now with an assembled price of six hundred and twenty one dollars.

13:45SPEAKERSo do you know what the kit do you know what the kit means?

13:49SPEAKERI mean, I assumed the assembled price meant they would just ship you

13:51SPEAKERthe entire thing ready to use for for that price.

13:53SPEAKERBut I don't know if it's kit.

13:55SPEAKERI don't know if kit price was like their manufacturing cost

13:57SPEAKERor can you just buy the raw parts at that price from them and do it yourself?

14:00SPEAKERSo kit price is getting all the boards in case and stuff and the components

14:06SPEAKERwithout having the components soldered on the board.

14:08SPEAKEROh, wait, they even do the soldering.

14:09SPEAKERNo, I guess everything was like like all the ICs and stuff

14:12SPEAKERwere fat enough at that point that like the pins were big enough.

14:14SPEAKERYou could just do that soldering, right?

14:16SPEAKERIt wasn't probably the only IC on the board would have been the 8088.

14:20SPEAKERBut the 8080. Yeah.

14:22SPEAKERThe the other stuff would have been like transistors

14:25SPEAKERand diodes and stuff like that, and they'd be all through holes.

14:28SPEAKERSo it'd be easy soldering.

14:29SPEAKERThere was a there was a kind of thing that happened in the early 70s,

14:32SPEAKERmaybe even late 60s.

14:34SPEAKERThere are a bunch of companies did.

14:35SPEAKERBut the one that I was familiar with was Heath Kit.

14:37SPEAKERAnd they went high five stuff when when solid state high five stuff became popular.

14:42SPEAKERThen they were selling kit, kit, high five things.

14:46SPEAKERAnd you could buy it like with a case or they they would also

14:49SPEAKERjust send you the plans for the case.

14:50SPEAKERAnd if you knew a cabinetry guy, you could make your own.

14:52SPEAKEROh, that's amazing.

14:53SPEAKERYeah. You had the people made like awesome burled maple high fives and stuff.

14:57SPEAKERI miss that era of kind of sort of consumer products, but also kind of like DIY.

15:02SPEAKERLike, oh, I know a cabinet maker who's going to make the housing for my stereo.

15:06SPEAKERIt's it's funny because like I I had hoped that we would see

15:10SPEAKERthat stuff come back on like Kickstarter and stuff like that.

15:14SPEAKERWe'd like we would see somebody doing a Kickstarter for an old

15:16SPEAKERHeath Kit high five because like my parents had a Heath Kit high five

15:19SPEAKERthat one of their friends put together for them who was into electronics.

15:22SPEAKERI want to say there is at least some movement toward that kind of DIY

15:27SPEAKERlike home built, at least speaker design, if nothing else.

15:31SPEAKERWell, I know

15:34SPEAKERI know that a bunch of people like I saw a redo of like the old 70s

15:39SPEAKERand 70s circuit design, like the the circuit design kits

15:42SPEAKERwhere the PCB had the print out of the of all the instructions

15:46SPEAKERto put it together and how it worked in the theory bind and stuff like that.

15:49SPEAKERLike that stuff has been has been in and out for a while.

15:53SPEAKERBut I haven't seen anything as involved as like the Heath Kit stuff.

15:56SPEAKERAnd the fact that you could buy this as a kit is is not at all surprising to me

15:59SPEAKERand explains why like the like especially UK magazines

16:04SPEAKERwould do still do really, really bonkers tie ins.

16:09SPEAKERLike like there's a model making magazine in the UK

16:11SPEAKERwhere if you subscribe for two years, you basically get a three thousand dollar

16:15SPEAKERship in the in a bottle that you have to assemble yourself.

16:18SPEAKERThat's expensive ship in the bottle.

16:20SPEAKERThere was one that did a studio scale Millennium Falcon a few years ago.

16:24SPEAKERThat was like a four year project.

16:26SPEAKERAnd each month you would get a little bag of pieces and you do that bag of pieces

16:29SPEAKERand you put it on the final thing and then you move on and on and on.

16:32SPEAKERWhat a studio scale studio scale would be about four feet across.

16:36SPEAKERSo it kind of fit in a room.

16:38SPEAKERSo it's not it's not as big as like the full scale shooting models

16:42SPEAKERthat they did for like the Star Destroyers and stuff like that.

16:44SPEAKERThey were like 15 feet long.

16:46SPEAKERBut it's the next it's the it's it's it's physically the same size as that.

16:51SPEAKERSo it'd be like four feet across

16:54SPEAKERwith really incredible attention to detail, like lighting kits and all that stuff.

16:56SPEAKERYou probably could shoot it as a miniature if you had to.

16:59SPEAKERYou absolutely could shoot it as a miniature.

17:00SPEAKERIt's fine. I don't know if you well, I know you've got plenty of experience

17:03SPEAKERwith like talking to Phil Tippett and people like that.

17:06SPEAKERBut if you ever dig into some of those fan communities,

17:09SPEAKERlike I spent way too much time reading about Star Trek,

17:11SPEAKERThe Next Generation at one point and like the making of it.

17:13SPEAKERAnd like they had like a six foot model that they never used

17:16SPEAKERbecause they didn't want to drag it out of storage.

17:18SPEAKERAnd then there's a four foot model that they always used

17:20SPEAKERbecause it was easier to shoot around.

17:21SPEAKERAnd like all the hardcore fans hate the four foot model

17:24SPEAKERbecause it looks terrible next to the big, you know, nice one.

17:27SPEAKERBut the bigger ones like that title sequence one.

17:29SPEAKERYeah, like they did the title sequence and like three other shots

17:32SPEAKERthat they reuse throughout the series with the six footer.

17:34SPEAKERAnd then it never got used again and people are very bitter about it.

17:36SPEAKERIt's funny going back and watching that stuff now because I was rewatching

17:40SPEAKERTNG when the good app with the good redos came up on Netflix

17:44SPEAKERor CBS all access or whatever.

17:46SPEAKERAnd the the number of reused interstitial shots is enormous.

17:51SPEAKERIt's wild. It is start seeing some side by side like it's crazy.

17:55SPEAKERI mean, you know, they were working on a super tight schedule

17:57SPEAKERand like kind of a tight budget as well, right?

17:59SPEAKERLike you kind of had to do stuff like that. It's understandable.

18:02SPEAKERBut it's pretty eye opening when you really side by side.

18:05SPEAKERIt even like the planet shots are the same.

18:08SPEAKERAnd then they just matted in a different planet. Yep. Yep.

18:11SPEAKERThere are shots.

18:12SPEAKERThere are shots in Next Generation that are straight up pulled

18:14SPEAKERfrom like the original series of movies.

18:15SPEAKERLike, I think it's oh, yeah, it's like I want to say it's Star Trek three.

18:19SPEAKERThere's a shot of like a star base that they just straight up took that element

18:23SPEAKERand used it in Next Generation and had the enterprise dock with it.

18:25SPEAKERI mean, like, you know, like it's conceivable that same star base

18:29SPEAKERwould be around 80 years later. Right.

18:30SPEAKERWell, and all of the like a lot of the ships were the same, too.

18:34SPEAKERLike like anyway, a different topic for another day.

18:37SPEAKERThis is a whole other episode, I think.

18:39SPEAKERDid you know that I want to say the gosh, I don't want to get this backwards.

18:42SPEAKERIt's it's the Romulan ships started as Klingon designs or vice versa.

18:47SPEAKERI forget which it is.

18:48SPEAKERThe Romulans bought Klingon ships was the was the in fiction experience.

18:52SPEAKERBut I think behind the scenes, they had designed it for one of those factions

18:55SPEAKERand then ended up using it for the other, but didn't bother to change the design.

18:58SPEAKERLike I could read about that stuff all day. But anyway,

19:02SPEAKERI want to talk about I think we should do a full episode about the Altair.

19:05SPEAKERYeah, that's that's very intimidating.

19:07SPEAKERThat's very intimidating to me.

19:09SPEAKERBut but I can I will follow you on that journey.

19:12SPEAKERYeah, I think it's a weird piece of electronics and I'm very curious about it now.

19:15SPEAKERShould we should we we should link that YouTube video I sent you in the show notes.

19:19SPEAKERJust there's there's a guy I just found found randomly on YouTube,

19:22SPEAKERa guy who really knows his way around an Altair 8800.

19:25SPEAKERYeah, watching him work that thing is is frightening almost.

19:29SPEAKERWell, the cool thing I was going to say is the other.

19:31SPEAKERI found a couple of cool things about this.

19:33SPEAKEROne is that there's a Mr.

19:34SPEAKERMr. Core that is seems to be pretty functional.

19:37SPEAKERThe other is that you can take an Arduino mega or a Dewey

19:42SPEAKERand basically build a fully functional emulator

19:46SPEAKERbecause that that Arduino, that ATmega on the Arduino is

19:51SPEAKERis going to emulate at about the same speed.

19:54SPEAKERAnd you can wire up all the all the switches and lights and stuff.

19:57SPEAKERAnd it actually just works.

19:58SPEAKEROh, that's wild. And that's an available project.

20:00SPEAKERSo if you want to make your make a fake Altair 8800, you can.

20:04SPEAKERI bet that is an incredibly educational process.

20:07SPEAKERI bet it would be.

20:07SPEAKERThat seems like the kind of thing that if I'm still interested in this

20:11SPEAKERin a few years when my daughter is in middle school,

20:13SPEAKERI'm going to offer as a middle school class for the kids to sign up for.

20:16SPEAKERThat would be so rad.

20:17SPEAKERCan I sign up for that class? I promise I will say anything.

20:20SPEAKERI'll just sit quietly in the back. Yeah, that's fine.

20:23SPEAKERYou can be you can assist you. You have skills. That's that's true.

20:26SPEAKEROh, there's one more thing I want to say about the Altair before we move on.

20:29SPEAKERYeah, it spawned it spawned what became the first industry standard

20:33SPEAKERkind of interconnect system bus that really that was used

20:36SPEAKERin other computers down the line, the S-100 modular system bus.

20:40SPEAKERBut the reason I think that's amusing is that that came about

20:44SPEAKERbecause their production schedule was so tight that all the parts

20:47SPEAKERthey needed to build the computer were not available on the schedule they wanted.

20:51SPEAKERSo they made the motherboard just a simple interconnect,

20:54SPEAKERjust a bunch of basically expansion slots on a circuit board

20:58SPEAKERand build expansion cards out of all the parts as they got them in

21:01SPEAKERand just plug all those cards in because they didn't have the stuff

21:04SPEAKERthey needed to put it all on the same board.

21:05SPEAKERSo they just made a bunch of expansion cards instead.

21:08SPEAKERWow. So they accidentally made the first expandable micro.

21:12SPEAKERWow. It really makes me wonder if like that is that just happenstance

21:15SPEAKERthat like brought about the expansion card model like way earlier

21:18SPEAKERthan it otherwise probably would have happened.

21:19SPEAKERGod, if that hadn't happened, it's entirely like if that hadn't happened,

21:23SPEAKERthen later on, when like the Apple II and the and the first Intel

21:27SPEAKERIBM PCs and stuff came out, they might not have included expansion slots.

21:30SPEAKERYou might have just been stuck with what was soldered onto the board.

21:33SPEAKERTotally. It's I just I love little historical elements like that.

21:37SPEAKERThat's just like, oh, things just went that way

21:38SPEAKERbecause they were forced to do it that way.

21:40SPEAKERAnd then look how that turned out. That's fascinating.

21:42SPEAKERAlso, the last thing I'll say about that, I've got to find this page.

21:46SPEAKERAgain, it is the S-100 bus. There's a Wikipedia page for it.

21:51SPEAKERI guess a bunch of other little companies sprung up around the Altair

21:54SPEAKERand its success building accessories and stuff for it.

21:57SPEAKERYou can go to that page if you want and see this picture there.

22:00SPEAKEROne of the companies that sprung up is called Chromemco or was.

22:03SPEAKERI mean, they're long gone. Pretty good name.

22:05SPEAKERThere's a picture here of the founders of Chromemco kneeling in the grass

22:09SPEAKERin their shitty 70s business suits and aviator sunglasses

22:14SPEAKERholding of that that expansion board. OK.

22:18SPEAKERThat is just the most 70s ass computer business photo

22:20SPEAKERI have ever seen in my entire life.

22:23SPEAKERIt will be it will be the the episode art of the show today. Excellent.

22:27SPEAKERBut this guy is shit eating grin with his aviators and his gold watch

22:32SPEAKERand his business suit and this computer board.

22:35SPEAKERAnd his 70s haircut, you really have to see it.

22:37SPEAKERIt's amazing.

22:39SPEAKERLike, it's amazing to me that this was such a cottage.

22:42SPEAKERHave you watched Halt and Catch Fire? No, I really should.

22:45SPEAKERSo maybe that's the thing we can do as a show thing, because I just started

22:49SPEAKERwatching it. I was like, I need to watch this with Brad

22:51SPEAKERbecause we need to talk about some of these episodes.

22:53SPEAKERIs it fictionalized or is it about real events? Is it based on?

22:57SPEAKERI do not know, but it is about basically

23:00SPEAKERthe fiction of this show is that they're it's the company

23:04SPEAKERthat builds the first IBM PC clone. OK.

23:07SPEAKERAnd how they reverse engineered the bios so that they could

23:12SPEAKERrun IBM software without copyright infringement.

23:16SPEAKERI'll have to look at it. Yeah, I've been familiar with that show.

23:17SPEAKERI wasn't sure if it was like based on real events

23:19SPEAKERor if they kind of did a dramatic treatment of it.

23:22SPEAKERMy guess is it's a dramatic treatment of something that happened in reality.

23:25SPEAKERBut I don't know for sure. OK.

23:27SPEAKERYeah, I should absolutely like I think I've talked about it before.

23:29SPEAKERPirates of Silicon Valley is like my favorite TV movie ever.

23:32SPEAKERYeah, this it has very much those vibes, but it is not.

23:35SPEAKERBut I mean, Pirates was fictionalized, too. So, yeah, for sure.

23:38SPEAKERYeah, pirates depicted some other stuff we will talk about from 1975

23:42SPEAKERin this episode. Interesting.

23:44SPEAKERSpace Mountain opened in January.

23:45SPEAKERI thought that was cool.

23:46SPEAKERSpace Mountain was the first roller coaster I ever rode.

23:48SPEAKERReally? The first one?

23:50SPEAKERFirst, like scary metal one.

23:51SPEAKERI rode like little kid roller coasters and stuff before.

23:54SPEAKERWas that the Disneyland Space Mountain or the Disney World Space Mountain?

23:56SPEAKERI've never been to Disneyland, so I haven't seen the world space.

23:59SPEAKERI haven't either.

23:59SPEAKERThat was so weird moving to California because everybody here

24:02SPEAKERhas been to Disneyland and I have not.

24:03SPEAKERYeah, like we were planning on taking my daughter to Disneyland last year,

24:06SPEAKERand then you know how that it worked out.

24:08SPEAKERYes. If you were on the East Coast, you ended up going to Florida.

24:11SPEAKERIt seems like the feeling I get having never been to Disneyland,

24:15SPEAKERbut going on connects Disneyland adventures multiple times

24:19SPEAKERis that the Disneyland version is a little bit charming,

24:21SPEAKERbut the Disney World vision is bigger and better in every important way.

24:25SPEAKERYes, but also way swampier.

24:27SPEAKERYeah, way, way muggier.

24:30SPEAKERIt was interesting because that was one of the first indoor steel coasters.

24:33SPEAKERIt was the first steel coaster dark ride. Oh,

24:37SPEAKERor or from my cursory research, that's what I found.

24:41SPEAKERI like I like Spaceship Earth.

24:43SPEAKERThat's more my speed.

24:44SPEAKERI mean, I don't think Spaceship Earth is Spaceship Earth anymore, Brad.

24:46SPEAKERIs it not? No, I think they replaced it with something else that's so sad.

24:50SPEAKERIt was inside the golf ball at Epcot that really that probably says a lot about.

24:53SPEAKERI mean, I have nothing against roller coasters, but riding that thing

24:56SPEAKERand seeing all the like early humans discovering fire stuff

25:00SPEAKERon like this nice slow educational ride was much more my thing.

25:04SPEAKERI rode that three or four times when we went to Epcot.

25:06SPEAKERThe other thing that's gone that I really loved was horizons at Epcot,

25:10SPEAKERwhich was one of the like the dark rides where you go through

25:13SPEAKERand it shows you like the history of technology

25:15SPEAKERor something presented by Shell or somebody.

25:16SPEAKERYes, I totally did that. Yes, that's right.

25:19SPEAKERYes. Yes. Presented by a large oil company.

25:22SPEAKERSo horizons, they when they read it,

25:24SPEAKERwhen they took out the FedEx branding from Space Mountain a few years ago,

25:27SPEAKERapparently they put in nods to horizons because that was going away

25:31SPEAKERand was becoming a car's ride or something around the same time.

25:34SPEAKERThat's sad. Yeah.

25:36SPEAKERProgress spread. Yeah.

25:37SPEAKERInevitable march of progress. Sure.

25:40SPEAKERYes, that's exactly what that is. Progress.

25:44SPEAKERNext, the Homebrew Computer Club.

25:47SPEAKERYeah, this is like I remember this, of course.

25:49SPEAKERI mean, that is a we babe.

25:50SPEAKERI didn't realize we were getting to that right now.

25:52SPEAKERBut that that is the thing in Pirates of Silicon Valley I was talking about.

25:55SPEAKERThere is a scene of that happening.

25:58SPEAKERThis is the now famous

26:00SPEAKERlike Silicon Valley nerds before Silicon Valley was Silicon Valley. Yes.

26:05SPEAKERWho who like this is where

26:09SPEAKERSteve Jobs and Steve Wozniak brought the first Apple computer

26:13SPEAKERand the Apple one mounted in that that cobbled together wooden case.

26:17SPEAKERLike there's photos of that thing out there.

26:18SPEAKERI'm sure it's in a museum somewhere.

26:20SPEAKERYeah, this is where Hewlett and Packard came together.

26:22SPEAKERAnd really, I believe that that was where they were part of this.

26:25SPEAKERBut I could be wrong.

26:26SPEAKERMaybe I'm maybe I am wrong.

26:27SPEAKERI'm questioning myself now.

26:29SPEAKEROh, you know, I mean, it's you know, it's it started in a, you know, like

26:32SPEAKERit was a Menlo Park.

26:34SPEAKERIt's somewhere, you know, somewhere in the South Bay.

26:36SPEAKERIt's Cupertino or something.

26:37SPEAKERI thought it started in a in a Silicon Valley garage, like literally in a garage.

26:41SPEAKERAnd it just it was only ran for a couple of years.

26:43SPEAKERBut yeah, like I guess the Apple is really the big claim to fame for that. Right.

26:48SPEAKERIt sounded like a big swap meet kind of.

26:50SPEAKERThat's what it was.

26:51SPEAKERIt was a bunch of engineers and nerds coming together to swap things.

26:53SPEAKERI mean, that's the real historical artifact out of that thing is that Wozniak

26:58SPEAKERwanted to distribute the plans for the Apple one to all the members

27:01SPEAKERof that computer club so they could just build it themselves. Right.

27:04SPEAKERBut what a different world it would have been.

27:06SPEAKERAnd then fate and by fate, I mean, Steve Jobs intervened and said, hey,

27:10SPEAKERwhat if we sold that to people for large amounts of money

27:13SPEAKERinstead of you just giving it away?

27:15SPEAKERAnd thus was born the personal computer industry.

27:18SPEAKERSo this happened March 5th, 1975.

27:21SPEAKERThis happened in Gordon French's garage. Yeah.

27:26SPEAKERIn Menlo Park, you're right.

27:27SPEAKERYes, I think the funny thing is, I think Gordon French actually bailed

27:31SPEAKERafter like three meetings and moved across the country for a job or something.

27:34SPEAKERSo he didn't even see all the good stuff. But that seems right.

27:38SPEAKERThe subsequent meetings were at the Slack, the Stanford Linear Accelerator,

27:42SPEAKERwhich is where it's that long building that you drive over

27:45SPEAKERwhen you go down to 80 towards San Jose.

27:50SPEAKERYeah, I'm I'm a.

27:53SPEAKERI yeah, this this is a it's weird to me that I live where this happened now.

27:58SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

27:59SPEAKERThis is a thing you heard about when you were kids when I was a kid, at least.

28:02SPEAKERWell, now it's all taken on the air of history, right?

28:04SPEAKERLike we were young, it was still happening.

28:06SPEAKERIt was business. It was like, you know, current events. But now it's like,

28:10SPEAKERwell, you know, most most of the people that participated in this

28:13SPEAKERare elderly or passing on at this point. Yeah.

28:16SPEAKERAnd it's becoming it's becoming a thing that happened

28:19SPEAKERand was important rather than is happening.

28:22SPEAKERSo the other people that were part of the club,

28:27SPEAKERHarry Garland and Roger Mellon, who were from Kremenko.

28:31SPEAKERYes, they were just pictured on the cover of this week's episode.

28:33SPEAKERI believe those guys were part of it before they hit the big time.

28:37SPEAKERYeah, Adam Osborne, the Osborne computer guy was was one of these folks.

28:41SPEAKERYes, a whole bunch of a whole bunch of companies,

28:46SPEAKERcomputer companies spawned out of the thing.

28:48SPEAKERJerry Lawson, who created the first cartridge based video game system,

28:52SPEAKERthe Fairchild Channel F, oh, which I believe we can also emulate on the Mr.

28:57SPEAKERThese days. Yeah, it was this was the thing they had a newsletter.

29:03SPEAKERIt looks like it was printed on a dot matrix printer, if I had to guess.

29:06SPEAKERI should hope so. It looks very cool. Yes.

29:10SPEAKEROK, what else we got? What's next?

29:12SPEAKERLet's see. So that happened in March.

29:15SPEAKERThe whole Microsoft being founded and

29:19SPEAKERoffering Altair a basic program happened around that time as well.

29:23SPEAKERWatched your video that's linked in the show notes

29:25SPEAKERso you can see how you loaded the basic program

29:27SPEAKERand how you checked that it loaded properly because it's incredible.

29:30SPEAKERAnd that guy doing it was with him.

29:31SPEAKERThat's that video is with an ad in board that makes that easier.

29:34SPEAKERApparently, like it's EPROM sounds sounds like without that bootloader

29:37SPEAKERprom that he's got in there, that was way more arduous.

29:41SPEAKEROne factoid did not happen in 1975, but that I really wanted to mention

29:45SPEAKERwhile I was reading up on this stuff.

29:47SPEAKERDid you know that before Microsoft, Paul Allen and Bill Gates

29:50SPEAKERhad founded another company called Trafo Data?

29:55SPEAKERYou look stunned.

29:59SPEAKERIs the O capitalized Brad? Yes, yes, it is.

30:01SPEAKERIt is Traf-O, capital O dash data.

30:06SPEAKERIt was a company that was trying to build a computer to analyze traffic data.

30:10SPEAKERI'm going to say that when you're starting a new company,

30:13SPEAKERpeople tell you not to worry too much about the name

30:15SPEAKERjust to get out there and start building something,

30:17SPEAKERbecause if you if you do it right, then nobody will care what the name is.

30:20SPEAKERAnd then they point to things like Salesforce and Oracle and stuff like that.

30:24SPEAKERAnd I think that there may be bad names out there.

30:28SPEAKERTraf-O Data is a bad name.

30:29SPEAKERI think there are names bad enough to sink your venture.

30:32SPEAKERHoly crap. Traf-O Data is one of them.

30:37SPEAKERAt the same time, Traf-O Data industries.

30:40SPEAKERI mean, Microsoft is just short for microcomputer software.

30:44SPEAKERYeah, that was a smash those words up.

30:47SPEAKERSalt bath style.

30:49SPEAKERYes. Yeah, I had to I just had to throw that out there.

30:53SPEAKERI thought that was very funny.

30:53SPEAKERAlso, it's a nightmare.

30:54SPEAKERThe other thing I read as I was researching early Microsoft was,

30:57SPEAKERdid you know that when Paul Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma

31:02SPEAKERand had to step back from the company?

31:05SPEAKERThis is apocryphal, as according to Paul Allen, the Bill Gates

31:07SPEAKERwanted to dilute his ownership of the company because he wasn't working hard enough.

31:11SPEAKERYeah, I had heard that.

31:13SPEAKERThat's I don't know if that's true or not.

31:15SPEAKERThat's what Paul Allen said in his book.

31:17SPEAKERIt was pretty cutthroat back then.

31:18SPEAKERI was going to say, yes, this is a very different image of the Bill Gates

31:21SPEAKERthan the one we know.

31:22SPEAKERLook, art is man not entitled to the sweat from his own brow.

31:26SPEAKERI was pretty sweaty in Albuquerque, I'm sure.

31:31SPEAKERLook, the the early the early pirates

31:35SPEAKERof Silicon Valley heard about the young libertines,

31:38SPEAKERbut they thought they were talking about libertarians.

31:40SPEAKERAnd anyway, you know, what else happened in seventy five?

31:44SPEAKERThis is fantastic. This is like this is your life, but it's not about me.

31:46SPEAKERThis is the best thing we've ever done.

31:48SPEAKERYou were around for some cool stuff, though.

31:52SPEAKERLet's see. I hate to do all the hardcore computing stuff right up front,

31:55SPEAKERbut that's kind of the order we're going in here.

31:57SPEAKERI guess the last thing I'll say, well, this this ties into that other stuff.

32:00SPEAKERLet's just go ahead and hit this one as well.

32:01SPEAKERThe the MOS 6502 CPU released in 1975.

32:06SPEAKERWhat what is the 6502 famous for?

32:08SPEAKERWhich is like arguably one of the most influential CPUs in history.

32:13SPEAKEROh, let me how about I just rattle off some of the things that the 6502

32:18SPEAKERwas was used for devices that were based on it.

32:22SPEAKERI like a rattle.

32:23SPEAKERIf you remember when we had Mike Micah on last year,

32:26SPEAKERhe was talking about learning assembly as a kid.

32:28SPEAKERYes, it was 6502 assembly is what he was talking about learning.

32:31SPEAKERLike that was the thing you learned in that era. So.

32:35SPEAKERWell, the the Acorn Adam, the Acorn Electron, the Apple one,

32:39SPEAKERthe Apple to the Apple to eat the Atari twenty six hundred fifty

32:42SPEAKERtwo hundred and seventy eight hundred.

32:44SPEAKERWow. The Atari 800 computer.

32:47SPEAKERWait, the Atari twenty six hundred and the Apple two had the same processor in them.

32:50SPEAKERI don't know if they were being used as the processor in both cases.

32:54SPEAKERIt could have been some kind of code process, but probably most likely.

32:56SPEAKERI mean, that seems right.

32:57SPEAKERMost likely the Atari 800 computer, the Atari Lynx apparently had it.

33:02SPEAKERThe handheld. Yes.

33:04SPEAKERWow. The BBC Master, the BBC Micro,

33:07SPEAKERthe Commodore Pet Vic 20, Commodore 64 and Commodore 128.

33:13SPEAKERThe Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System.

33:16SPEAKERReally? Yes.

33:19SPEAKERSome others, there's some other stuff.

33:20SPEAKERSome did. You know, I wonder if that was the first thing they shipped a billion of.

33:25SPEAKERI wonder what the first microprocessor they shipped a billion units of.

33:28SPEAKERThat's a good question.

33:29SPEAKERIt's probably either that or the 808 86 probably would be my guess.

33:33SPEAKERSo I read up on it.

33:34SPEAKERI've always heard about the 6502 and I didn't know why it was so significant.

33:37SPEAKERApparently it was it was made by former Motorola engineers

33:40SPEAKERwho were basically trying to build a cheaper version of the Motorola 6800,

33:44SPEAKERwhich was a common CPU at that time.

33:46SPEAKERYeah. But it was.

33:49SPEAKERLet's see, this says that the 6502 when it came out, sold for less than

33:53SPEAKERone sixth of the competing designs from companies

33:57SPEAKERlike Motorola's 6800 or the Intel 8080.

33:59SPEAKERSo you can see why it would be so influential if it was like roughly.

34:05SPEAKERRoughly as good as those for six of the price, it says that the 6502

34:08SPEAKERand the Zilog Z80, which I'm sure you've heard of, are kind of like the first

34:12SPEAKERtrue cheap commodity processors that really kicked off that revolution.

34:17SPEAKERAnd this is why we started seeing things like the TI 99 4A and all those

34:21SPEAKERthose kind of not clones, but just like there was a weird proliferation of

34:26SPEAKERcompletely incompatible

34:30SPEAKERprocessors and systems at that time period, which was weird.

34:33SPEAKERI want to say I think the I think that when I got a TI 85 in high school.

34:37SPEAKEROh, yeah. Was the first time I heard of a Zilog Z80.

34:40SPEAKERIsn't that what those are based on?

34:41SPEAKERI don't I honestly, I have no idea on this stuff.

34:44SPEAKERThis was before I was paying attention to this.

34:46SPEAKERI believe that's the case. I could be wrong.

34:49SPEAKERI'm sorry to just turn this into Brad Google's things.

34:51SPEAKERLook, I didn't realize the computers were cool until like 1991, probably.

34:56SPEAKERYeah, it's kind of 94 ish is when I started thinking like,

34:59SPEAKERhey, there's more to do with these things than just play video games.

35:02SPEAKERI didn't I mean, I guess I knew that the that like I like the TI 99 4A.

35:08SPEAKERI like typing programs in basic, but I never had the impetus to learn

35:11SPEAKERhow to write code, really. Yeah.

35:12SPEAKERAnd like it's just it it seemed like it lost usefulness pretty quickly.

35:18SPEAKERAnd then the NES came out and I enjoyed playing games on that.

35:20SPEAKERBut I didn't even think about that as a computer.

35:22SPEAKERIt was just something you jam cartridges into and then were entertained.

35:24SPEAKERI had no idea that the NES had a 6502 in it until until I read this list.

35:29SPEAKERI knew it was the two years old. Yes, basically. Nice.

35:33SPEAKERThe Tamagotchi. Remember that that had a 6502 in it.

35:36SPEAKERI like so. So think about like this is the thing that's fascinating for me

35:40SPEAKERin the course of my life.

35:42SPEAKERWe've gone from the introduction of the first microcomputer,

35:45SPEAKERlike personal computer type thing with the Altair to like,

35:49SPEAKERI have a phone that I carry around that probably is equivalent

35:52SPEAKERto all of the computing power in the world in like 1982 or something.

35:55SPEAKERProbably maybe faster, maybe more, actually. Yeah.

35:59SPEAKERLike I, I, I, I kind of want to do the math on that and see

36:03SPEAKERhow many teraflops my 3080 has versus the world in what year?

36:08SPEAKERLike, it's a lot to think about. Did those lines cross?

36:11SPEAKERThat's a lot to think about.

36:15SPEAKERThe first videotape stuff came out that year.

36:17SPEAKERYeah. Sony released the Betamax home video recorder.

36:21SPEAKERI want to say in Japan only at first.

36:24SPEAKERSo, OK, so here's the difference.

36:26SPEAKERYou were born a few years after me. I was born in '79. So

36:30SPEAKERI remember when my dad brought home the first VCR that we'd seen. OK.

36:35SPEAKERLike I like I have a distinct memory of him coming home with a luggable VHS

36:40SPEAKERor VCR. It might have been a Betamax. I don't even know.

36:43SPEAKERBut he had it came in a it had like a case with shoulder straps

36:46SPEAKERand it was two pieces. Yes.

36:48SPEAKERThere was the piece with the head unit where the tape went in.

36:51SPEAKERAnd then there was the piece that you connected the TV

36:53SPEAKERand you connected those two together with a huge cable. Yep.

36:57SPEAKERAnd it was like each one was like together.

37:00SPEAKERThey would have been wider than what we think of as like modern stereo with,

37:03SPEAKERwhich is like a one you rack like a rack rack with.

37:09SPEAKERAnd he brought home.

37:11SPEAKERI feel like we watched Black Hole,

37:13SPEAKERthe Black Hole, the Disney movie from 1979. Yeah.

37:16SPEAKERAnd I don't remember what the other the other thing might have been

37:18SPEAKERsomething that mom and dad watched that was not appropriate for kids.

37:21SPEAKERBut the black hole scared the living shit out of me.

37:23SPEAKERLike, I don't know if you've ever seen that movie,

37:25SPEAKERbut like they turn people into robots. It's real scary. Yeah.

37:28SPEAKEREspecially for the touchstone or whatever.

37:30SPEAKERBuena Vista Productions, whatever it was back then.

37:33SPEAKERScary movies, educational theme park rides.

37:35SPEAKERIt was a very different Disney back then.

37:37SPEAKERLook, the thing I will say about Black Hole is

37:41SPEAKERSlim Pickens plays one of the robots.

37:42SPEAKEROK. He's great.

37:44SPEAKERSlim Pickens is always good in my book.

37:46SPEAKERAnd Ernest Borgnine plays a human.

37:49SPEAKERSo like enough said.

37:52SPEAKERYeah. Love the Borgnine.

37:53SPEAKERI get what you're picking it up.

37:57SPEAKERSo so, yeah, our first VCR was the same way.

37:59SPEAKERLike I'm not old enough to remember not having it,

38:01SPEAKERbut it was definitely one of those kind of two for one.

38:05SPEAKERGigantic double box situations. Yeah.

38:08SPEAKERMy dad bought a camcorder, all of my childhood

38:12SPEAKERmovies are shot on this camcorder he bought that went with that set.

38:15SPEAKEROh, man, I can't wait for the video podcast of those.

38:17SPEAKERAnd the fun part is you had to take the the tape deck half of the VCR.

38:24SPEAKERStick a strap on it and sling it over your shoulder and hook the camera up to that.

38:27SPEAKERSo like any time he was shooting home movies around the house,

38:30SPEAKERhe literally was like wearing half of the VCR hanging off his shoulder,

38:33SPEAKERhooked up to the camera he was shooting with.

38:35SPEAKERAnd and what was the battery life like eight minutes?

38:38SPEAKERI can't even imagine. Yeah, I don't know.

38:40SPEAKERWow. You might have had to plug into a wall.

38:42SPEAKERI don't know. Maybe you had to be near a power source. I'm not sure.

38:46SPEAKERSo like I'm not old enough for beta.

38:49SPEAKERI don't know if I've ever actually seen a Betamax deck in person.

38:51SPEAKERYou have because you had not seen it, I'm sure.

38:53SPEAKERYes, I will say outside of outside of like a game spot,

38:56SPEAKERbecause at that time, like in the even in the late 90s, 2000s,

39:00SPEAKERmost game footage was distributed on beta tapes.

39:03SPEAKERYeah, I remember the first time I went to to E3

39:07SPEAKERand they handed out like CD-ROMs, I guess. Right.

39:10SPEAKERRecordable CDs. That was like a huge moment.

39:12SPEAKERLike like Betacam was huge in like TV broadcast for a long time.

39:15SPEAKERBut but in home consumer tapes, it was VHS versus Betamax.

39:19SPEAKERAnd I always heard about that as like the prototypical format war.

39:21SPEAKERLike that was the original format war, right? Yeah.

39:23SPEAKERThere's two competing formats going head to head.

39:25SPEAKEROne is better than the other one. But like which one will reign supreme?

39:28SPEAKERTurned out it was the one that was cheaper and good enough.

39:31SPEAKERYeah, well, it's it's interesting because it was the first time it was the prior.

39:35SPEAKERLike, I don't know who owns the IP for cassette tapes, actually.

39:39SPEAKERLike, wait, audio, like audio tapes.

39:41SPEAKERYes, I don't know.

39:43SPEAKERThere has to be there has to be patents and licensing on that, right?

39:46SPEAKERYeah, well, that may have would that have expired by now?

39:48SPEAKERWell, yeah, it would have.

39:49SPEAKERBut but like maybe maybe the record industry bought that stuff and just like

39:53SPEAKERthey were just like, hey, here's an easy format for you to distribute music

39:56SPEAKERin that works in the car without scratching your records or whatever.

39:58SPEAKERRight. Like the photograph probably doesn't have that.

40:01SPEAKERIf I think about it, probably not.

40:03SPEAKERIs it existed for too long?

40:05SPEAKERI don't know. I record everything on wax cylinder.

40:07SPEAKERThank you. It's really it's got a warmer, more natural sound.

40:13SPEAKERI've I've always I've always heard that like beta was better, but VHS one,

40:18SPEAKERbut I never knew why. So I kind of looked into it.

40:19SPEAKERAnd there's all kinds of weird

40:21SPEAKERbasically sounds like Sony tripping over itself repeatedly.

40:25SPEAKERThey own the you know, they own the IP and JVC own VHS.

40:29SPEAKERSony insists on on making all the beta stuff themselves, while JVC

40:32SPEAKERjust licensed the tech out to whoever and they all made competing VHS machines.

40:36SPEAKERSo they all, you know, race to the bottom.

40:38SPEAKERYeah. Rising tide lifts all ships is the other way to say that.

40:42SPEAKERSure. Yeah. However, you want to look at it.

40:46SPEAKERBeta was technically higher resolution than VHS.

40:48SPEAKERBut only like 10 or 15 lines.

40:50SPEAKERYou know, but technically better, better sound.

40:52SPEAKERIt had to have less image jitter than VHS.

40:54SPEAKERActually, it turns out the image jitter is 30 percent better on my Betamax

40:58SPEAKERthan yes. Yes. Yes. It was basically that it was basically that

41:02SPEAKERalso the limited beta tapes to only an hour where VHS tapes were too initially

41:06SPEAKERmeaning that you could tape an entire movie off of TV without having to switch tapes.

41:10SPEAKERSo the interesting thing about that is that that was because

41:14SPEAKERSony was afraid they were going to get sued by the movie people. Interesting.

41:17SPEAKERYeah. And then they get sued by the movie people, which led to the fair use doctrine.

41:22SPEAKERNo kidding. Or write it for sale.

41:24SPEAKEROne of the important copyright doctrines is that, hey, once you

41:29SPEAKERthat that big copying was not piracy.

41:32SPEAKEROK, because like up until that point, there was a feeling

41:35SPEAKERand the movie industry was trying to put this forward that if you copied

41:38SPEAKERthe thing that I did that my parents did by copying recording Star Wars

41:42SPEAKERoff of CBS when it was aired over the air was piracy.

41:46SPEAKERNo kidding. Think about that.

41:47SPEAKERI bet I bet they would have loved to get away with that.

41:50SPEAKERWell, it went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court was like basically,

41:52SPEAKERno, dog, it was over the airwaves. They're just time shifting.

41:55SPEAKERThat's totally fair.

41:56SPEAKERMuch like they don't sell and distribute those tapes. It's fine.

41:58SPEAKERMuch like we had a very different Disney back then.

42:00SPEAKERWe also had a very different Supreme Court and political apparatus.

42:03SPEAKERI think that I.

42:06SPEAKERI feel that those those those protections are just being eroded systematically.

42:10SPEAKERRight. Probably true.

42:12SPEAKERI feel like about it, that that is another.

42:15SPEAKERSo on the list of things that we should talk about at some point,

42:17SPEAKERI think that is one that we should get a lawyer in to talk about,

42:19SPEAKERbecause it is a very interesting topic.

42:21SPEAKERAnd the way that that worked out was not the way you would expect

42:24SPEAKERbased on the kind of party theses at the time.

42:28SPEAKERAnyway. Yeah. So, yes, beta beta was the original example

42:32SPEAKERof a better format being destroyed by the thing that was cheaper and more accessible.

42:35SPEAKERYeah, that makes sense.

42:37SPEAKERWhich has which has then played out again over and over and always ends the same way.

42:41SPEAKERWell, usually.

42:47SPEAKERI mean, Blu-ray one when it was the more open one.

42:50SPEAKERI don't want to I don't want to be at a turn.

42:52SPEAKERI would have to research to make sure.

42:53SPEAKERBut my memory of that is that Sony pulled some behind the scenes maneuvering

42:57SPEAKERand they could put it in the PlayStation.

42:59SPEAKERWell, there was that, but they also I'd swear they also paid some companies

43:02SPEAKERoff in some way to boost Blu-ray somehow.

43:05SPEAKERI can't remember exactly how that went down,

43:07SPEAKERbut it was not a pure market forces determining the winner situation.

43:10SPEAKERIt was like there was some business behind the scenes.

43:12SPEAKERThey I think my understanding is that they well, they own movie studios at that point.

43:16SPEAKERSo there were some movies that were never going to be available on HD DVD.

43:19SPEAKERIt might have been some stuff like that as well.

43:20SPEAKERYeah. DVD was, I think, the better and cheaper format, but it did not win in that case.

43:27SPEAKERSo the other thing on beta versus VHS

43:30SPEAKERis that Sony didn't allow pornography on beta tapes.

43:34SPEAKERThat's always the real bellwether, which everybody always says that

43:37SPEAKERwhen you're talking about stuff there, like even when we started VR stuff

43:40SPEAKERten, five years ago, people like, you know, what's the porn situation like,

43:43SPEAKERwhich is fucking always creepy when people are like investors are like,

43:47SPEAKERhey, what's going on with porn on this?

43:48SPEAKERMm hmm. I don't they know where the money is.

43:52SPEAKERI feel like that was much less important than the one hour tapes

43:57SPEAKERand everything being way more expensive.

43:59SPEAKERWell, at that time, I mean, like the whole industry was nascent, right?

44:02SPEAKERLike, I mean.

44:04SPEAKERThe porn industry or the video industry, the adult, the adult film industry,

44:08SPEAKERlike there wasn't that much of that to go around to put on tapes at that time.

44:11SPEAKERRight. I think my understanding of what the adult industry was like

44:14SPEAKERin the early mid seventies is entirely based on fictionalized accounts

44:19SPEAKERlike Boogie Nights. Sure.

44:20SPEAKERSo I don't I don't I don't know.

44:23SPEAKERI feel like they were probably a lot of money going around

44:25SPEAKERjudging by the copious drug use is depicted in fiction. Yes, I don't know.

44:29SPEAKERGod, I just watched Boogie Nights again a couple of weeks ago.

44:31SPEAKERThe fine film. It's still it's still holds up quite well.

44:34SPEAKERAnd I think I determined I don't ever need to watch it again.

44:36SPEAKERIt's just it's too depressing. It's funny.

44:38SPEAKERIt's like the level of depressing it gets.

44:40SPEAKERThe older I get is is market. Yes.

44:47SPEAKERSo the next thing on our list

44:48SPEAKERis the end of the coal of the space race. Oh.

44:51SPEAKERThe Apollo Soyuz handshake in space

44:55SPEAKERor as it's officially known, the Apollo Soyuz test project. Oh.

44:58SPEAKERWhich was a basically in in the mid seventies,

45:03SPEAKERwe were done going to the moon almost and they built a bunch of these Saturn

45:07SPEAKERfive rockets and they built a bunch of these Apollo capsules

45:09SPEAKERand they were like, what can we do with these?

45:12SPEAKERSo they used a couple of the Saturn five rockets

45:13SPEAKERto fire Voyager probes out into the cosmos.

45:16SPEAKERWait, those were Saturn five.

45:17SPEAKERYeah, those are Saturn five. I did not know that.

45:19SPEAKERBecause remember, originally the Apollo program was going to be longer.

45:22SPEAKERIt was going to. That's right. That's right.

45:24SPEAKERWas it was it just funding cuts that killed it?

45:26SPEAKEROr was it the was it like 13 and the some of the disasters as well

45:30SPEAKERor mostly funding? I'm sure nobody watched anymore.

45:33SPEAKEROK, like we went to the moon like five, six times.

45:35SPEAKERPeople like that's probably we've done this.

45:38SPEAKERAnd is golf on the moon again this week?

45:42SPEAKERYeah. What's what's they they're driving a buggy.

45:45SPEAKERI don't even know. No.

45:47SPEAKERSo they go into the moon.

45:49SPEAKERAnd then also they had the extra capsules.

45:53SPEAKERSo they talked to the Russians.

45:57SPEAKERThe Russians were focusing on on space stations at this point

46:01SPEAKERbecause they'd lost the moon.

46:02SPEAKERThey were they were launching the Salut space stations.

46:05SPEAKERAnd they'd had, you know, the two things reading about this

46:09SPEAKERthat I didn't appreciate. One is that.

46:14SPEAKERThe Russian space program was incredibly secretive

46:16SPEAKERin a way that it's hard to appreciate here,

46:19SPEAKERbecause like instead of showing live video from the moon

46:21SPEAKERor from the like people on the way to the moon,

46:24SPEAKERyou would only hear about Russian space stuff like they only aired

46:28SPEAKERfootage after they were back and it went well.

46:31SPEAKEROf course. I mean, those total state media control. Right.

46:34SPEAKERRight. But like there were a couple of there were a couple of deaths.

46:39SPEAKERThere were accidents involving deaths, stuff like that.

46:41SPEAKERThere was an accident earlier in seventy five with the Soyuz 18A, I think,

46:47SPEAKERwhere the second and third stages didn't separate properly.

46:51SPEAKERAnd they had to like basically they just did a suborbital flight, huh?

46:56SPEAKERWhere they broke the capsule loose at the last minute and like ended up near China.

47:01SPEAKERAnd the guys, the cosmonauts had to camp for a night or two

47:04SPEAKERwhile they were waiting for the for the Russians to find them.

47:06SPEAKERAs long as they landed safely, I'm sure they were fine to hang out.

47:09SPEAKERLook, they thought they were in China for a bit.

47:10SPEAKERAnd apparently China and Russia, the USSR weren't too best at each other at the time.

47:14SPEAKERThat was not. Yes, that was a rough time for them.

47:17SPEAKERSo is Soyuz just a rocket design?

47:19SPEAKERIt's not like an overarching program like Apollo, right?

47:22SPEAKERIs it just does that just refer to the rocket?

47:24SPEAKERSoyuz is the capsule is the capsule.

47:26SPEAKERIt was just the capsule.

47:28SPEAKERSo they have called a bunch of different things Soyuz over the years.

47:31SPEAKERBut the gist is the same, which is that there's like a command module.

47:35SPEAKERThe difference is that they had.

47:37SPEAKERSo the little ball on top is the capsule where the people go.

47:41SPEAKEROK, for the most part, but you also could go down into the like their their version of the

47:47SPEAKERwhat's what's the thing, the the the tail of the command module and the Apollo Apollo called

47:54SPEAKERthe the thing that blew up in Apollo 13.

47:56SPEAKEROh, gosh, I can't remember.

47:58SPEAKERIt's it doesn't matter.

47:59SPEAKERIt's the thing. There's like a little engine and all that.

48:01SPEAKERThat part drops off on the Soyuz and then the just the capsule reenters

48:07SPEAKERand then there's parachutes and it's designed to land on land instead of water.

48:10SPEAKEROh, so it has like retro rockets that fire at the last second to slow it down.

48:13SPEAKEROK. I was just curious because I believe they still use the name Soyuz today, right?

48:18SPEAKERUh huh. That's what that's what goes to that's what takes the Russian cosmonauts to the space

48:22SPEAKERstation still.

48:23SPEAKERRight. Like that's what we have, like the U.S.

48:25SPEAKERhas contracted to kind of until very recently hitchhike on, right?

48:29SPEAKERYeah, exactly. At the time, Soyuz was only two people.

48:33SPEAKERSo the handshake in space was was four, sorry, five, three

48:38SPEAKERastronauts, two cosmonauts, and they designed a

48:42SPEAKERdocking system that was universal and let either side because of politics, I

48:47SPEAKERassume either side could be the passive receiver for the docking port

48:53SPEAKERso that like Soyuz could dock with the Apollo or Apollo could dock with the Soyuz

48:57SPEAKERand then they opened up the hatch between themselves.

48:59SPEAKERThey shook hands in space.

49:01SPEAKERIt was the first time Westerners, I think, were allowed at the launch facilities

49:06SPEAKERin Russia because it was military secrets up until that point.

49:09SPEAKERSure.

49:10SPEAKERBecause like rockets, rockets to go to space, ICBM, same basic thing.

49:14SPEAKERRockets are really just bomb delivery mechanisms.

49:16SPEAKERJust the fact that they were used for space exploration was a nice side benefit.

49:20SPEAKERYeah. The but but so this

49:25SPEAKERbasically founded the this was the foundational work that became

49:30SPEAKERthat preceded Americans in the shuttle program going to Mir.

49:34SPEAKERRight. Which was the long the Russia's longest running space station

49:39SPEAKERthat was launched in the USSR when the USSR was still in charge.

49:43SPEAKERAnd then after the after the Soviets fell, was maintained by Russia for a few more years.

49:49SPEAKERApollo astronauts, the Apollo crew was allowed to inspect the Soyuz capsule,

49:54SPEAKERwhich was the first thing.

49:55SPEAKERThe other thing about this that was fascinating to me is remember

49:58SPEAKERthere were seven Mercury astronauts, the Mercury seven.

50:01SPEAKERYes. Only six of them.

50:03SPEAKERThere were only six Mercury flights.

50:05SPEAKEROK, so the seventh was supposed to be flown by Duke Slayton,

50:09SPEAKERwho famously went on to command the astronaut corps for years and years and years

50:14SPEAKERand like helped was one of the establishing forces on the shuttle program.

50:18SPEAKERDuke Slayton had a heart arrhythmia,

50:22SPEAKERwhich is, I think, depicted in the right stuff even

50:25SPEAKERand wasn't able to fly as part of Mercury.

50:27SPEAKERHe was disqualified for flight.

50:28SPEAKERThen he ended up being the docking pilot for this Apollo Soyuz test project,

50:35SPEAKERwhich was the only time he ever flew to space.

50:36SPEAKEROK, so he still got to go.

50:38SPEAKERSo he still got to go.

50:40SPEAKERAnd and like historians now generally regard this as the end of the space race.

50:44SPEAKERUp until this point, it was, you know, superpowers competing against each other.

50:48SPEAKERAnd then then we entered an era of cooperation.

50:50SPEAKERYeah, it turns out you can get a lot more done.

50:52SPEAKERI don't know about that, but when you were too well, ideally.

50:55SPEAKERAlso, I just have to say there is no way you don't end up

50:58SPEAKERprobably, I assume, in a military role and then end up in the space program.

51:03SPEAKERThere's no way you don't do that.

51:04SPEAKERIf you have a name like Duke Slayton.

51:06SPEAKERLook, that's just his name, man.

51:07SPEAKERYou are destined.

51:09SPEAKERYou're destined to fly on a rocket someday.

51:11SPEAKERIf you have a name like Duke Slayton.

51:13SPEAKERDuke is short for something that we don't.

51:14SPEAKERIt's just short for a name we don't use anymore.

51:16SPEAKERI don't know what it is now.

51:17SPEAKERYeah, who can get there faster?

51:21SPEAKERDonald Kent Slayton is his full name.

51:23SPEAKERDonald Kent. Yeah, there you go.

51:25SPEAKERYeah. The other thing about this.

51:28SPEAKERThere's that 50s high and tight looking haircut.

51:30SPEAKERYep. Oh, yeah. The whole thing.

51:32SPEAKERThe other thing that's fun about this is that the Russians,

51:36SPEAKERboth the Russians and the Americans felt like everybody else's

51:41SPEAKERthe other the other side

51:42SPEAKERspacecraft were unreliable for the exact same reason as each other. Sure.

51:45SPEAKERSo the Russians basically let the machines run everything.

51:49SPEAKERSo there was no pilot error to be introduced.

51:51SPEAKERAnd the Americans were like, these are highly complicated capsules

51:54SPEAKERthat have multiple redundancies that have to be controlled by a human.

51:57SPEAKERSo the Russians were like putting a human charge of this thing is asinine.

52:00SPEAKERAnd the Americans were like, do you really trust a machine to fly a spaceship?

52:04SPEAKERGood God, man.

52:05SPEAKERI feel like I feel like there's a cautionary tale

52:07SPEAKERabout putting a machine in charge of all your rockets.

52:09SPEAKERLike, what was it called?

52:11SPEAKERThat's probably fine.

52:12SPEAKERNothing. I was going to one more thing.

52:15SPEAKERI was going to ask if you happen to know.

52:17SPEAKERDo you know what became of Mir?

52:18SPEAKERLike, how do you decommission a space station like to crash into the Indian Ocean?

52:22SPEAKERDo they crash it?

52:23SPEAKERI was going to I was going to ask if they like dismantled it

52:24SPEAKERand took it upon, like, tried to bring it down responsibly.

52:28SPEAKERCrashing it into the ocean also works.

52:30SPEAKERThey tried to aim it, as is my understanding.

52:32SPEAKERBut like that is it's a.

52:37SPEAKERIt's hard to aim a falling spacecraft.

52:39SPEAKERI mean, we learned this with the with the Chinese thing

52:40SPEAKERthat crashed a few days ago, right? Yeah.

52:43SPEAKERBecause it like the the top like the edge of the atmosphere isn't.

52:48SPEAKERIsn't like uniform, right?

52:50SPEAKERSo for drag and friction and all that stuff can be affected

52:53SPEAKERby the orientation of the spacecraft, all the different stuff.

52:56SPEAKERSo like the the where this is going to crash

53:01SPEAKERwas a was a period of three orbits,

53:04SPEAKERyou know, around the earth somewhere, somewhere on three different circles

53:07SPEAKERaround the earth and over a period of like 18 hours or something like that.

53:13SPEAKERSo Mir was the first modular space station, too, is the other thing.

53:16SPEAKERSo they brought up multiple pieces and then assembled it in orbit. Right.

53:20SPEAKERWhich is obviously what we did with the ISS,

53:22SPEAKERbecause it's way too big to have launched at this point. Yes.

53:26SPEAKERAnd it I'm going to say final days in d orbit.

53:30SPEAKERYeah. Broke up over the South Pacific. OK.

53:34SPEAKERThere's an issue on what you assume.

53:35SPEAKERI assume they try to collect all that debris and not just let it sink.

53:38SPEAKERBut I don't know.

53:39SPEAKERNo, I bet it just sunk into the ocean

53:41SPEAKERbecause how can they have boats in the place to know where it lands?

53:43SPEAKERYeah, I guess. Yeah, OK. Fair point.

53:46SPEAKERYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

53:49SPEAKERI still I'm surprised we haven't had a movie yet about the guy

53:54SPEAKERwho was the the people that were on Mir over the, you know,

53:58SPEAKERthe fall of the Soviet Empire Soviet Union, because they were for a long time.

54:02SPEAKERThey were the longest duration.

54:04SPEAKERThe the longest single contiguous duration that somebody had been in space

54:07SPEAKERbecause like the Russians couldn't want somebody new to get up to him,

54:11SPEAKERget it, get up there. Right.

54:13SPEAKERAnd they didn't want to leave it untended because it would it would have crashed.

54:16SPEAKERGod, can you like I don't know a ton.

54:18SPEAKERI mean, I know a little bit about the fall of the Soviet Union,

54:20SPEAKERbut the the sheer administrative chaos that ensued that I'm aware of,

54:24SPEAKERlike I can't even imagine how stranded they felt up there.

54:26SPEAKERYeah, I feel like the launch facilities and stuff

54:28SPEAKERwere in different countries after the fall of the Soviet Union, right?

54:31SPEAKERLike, yeah. Anyway.

54:34SPEAKERUm, Wheel of Fortune premiered on January 6th of 1975.

54:39SPEAKERDo you know if they did they use?

54:40SPEAKERI'm sure they did not use screens for the letters right off the bat.

54:44SPEAKERSure. I assume they have some kind of mechanical.

54:46SPEAKERShe used to spin the things.

54:48SPEAKERRight. That's right.

54:49SPEAKERThat's what Vanna White's job was.

54:50SPEAKERThat's right. She physically spun a thing.

54:52SPEAKERShe walked up in front.

54:53SPEAKERThere was like a triangular shaped thing and she spun it.

54:56SPEAKERThat was her job.

54:57SPEAKEROh, my God. I might have been young enough to to see that at some point.

55:00SPEAKERThat was on when we were like when I was in high school, right?

55:02SPEAKERThat was the way it worked.

55:04SPEAKERThat's right.

55:05SPEAKEREventually, they switched to the thing that was like the color,

55:07SPEAKERlike the sign letters where she hit the button underneath and the light turned on.

55:11SPEAKERWalked up and hit a button like that.

55:12SPEAKERYou really need a human being to do that at that point. Yeah.

55:17SPEAKERThat's it. That's all I got.

55:18SPEAKERAustralia switched to full time color TV on March 1st of 1975.

55:22SPEAKERSo good job, Australia.

55:24SPEAKERYeah, but all the colors are backwards down there.

55:26SPEAKERUpside down. Oh, right. Yeah.

55:29SPEAKERJaws came out in June, which was the first summer blockbuster.

55:33SPEAKERYeah, I had started to talk to should we get into this?

55:36SPEAKERI've never seen Jaws, dude.

55:37SPEAKERI don't have anything to say.

55:38SPEAKERI was all excited when we were planning this episode to drop the

55:41SPEAKERI've never seen Jaws on you and then you did it first.

55:44SPEAKERI was like, wait a minute.

55:45SPEAKERThat's my thing. We spoiler the planning.

55:47SPEAKERLook, I have a lot of gaps.

55:48SPEAKERI've never seen Rocky.

55:50SPEAKERI've never seen Jaws.

55:51SPEAKERI don't think I've seen the first Rambo.

55:53SPEAKERI have not. I have also not seen any of those movies.

55:56SPEAKERWhat is wrong with us?

55:56SPEAKERWere we too busy fiddling with computers?

55:59SPEAKERI don't really like Sylvester Stallone that much.

56:01SPEAKERAnd I had to watch Jaws multiple times, but I keep falling asleep.

56:04SPEAKERSo I am I am I am extremely on the Schwarzenegger side of that divide.

56:08SPEAKERIf such a divide exists.

56:10SPEAKERWhy do you think that's a spectrum?

56:11SPEAKERLike on one end is Schwarzenegger and I don't think so.

56:15SPEAKERWe should ask Dan Reichert.

56:16SPEAKERI mean, I think they can be enjoyed together.

56:18SPEAKERI like the Expendables, OK?

56:20SPEAKERIt's not they're not good, but they're fun.

56:22SPEAKERWait, was Arnold in those?

56:24SPEAKERYeah. Are you sure?

56:26SPEAKERHundred percent.

56:27SPEAKERI thought he was too big for that.

56:29SPEAKERNo, he came in on the second one, I think.

56:31SPEAKERMaybe he was he was a bad guy on the first one.

56:33SPEAKERI think I can't remember.

56:35SPEAKERAt some point, he got old enough that they could get him.

56:37SPEAKERYeah, well, the first one, I think he might have still been governor.

56:41SPEAKEROK, sure. So he was busy, it turns out.

56:44SPEAKERI would you know, I would like to I would like to read up more on exactly

56:48SPEAKERin what ways Jaws invented the blockbuster.

56:50SPEAKERI mean, obviously, like there were there were some special effects

56:52SPEAKERthat were not like radically innovative.

56:54SPEAKERWell, so the interesting thing to me about Jaws, I for somebody

56:58SPEAKERwho's never actually seen the entire movie, I've

57:01SPEAKERwe talked about it a lot. It tested with Adam.

57:03SPEAKERThe thing about Jaws that's interesting is the shark scenes were effective

57:07SPEAKERbecause the shark was janky and didn't work.

57:09SPEAKERSo they were forced to shoot around the shark being bad,

57:12SPEAKERwhich meant that they didn't really show the shark all that much.

57:16SPEAKERAnd that like that.

57:19SPEAKERA, it invented the blockbuster

57:20SPEAKERbecause people came to see it like 18 times because they were they loved it.

57:23SPEAKERRight. It was very exciting.

57:25SPEAKERB, the the big effects robot being

57:30SPEAKERlike the smallest part of the movie actually ended up making the movie much better.

57:35SPEAKERLike if they had shown a bunch of the shark and it was the shitty shark robot,

57:38SPEAKEReveryone like, oh, this is really stupid and nobody nobody likes it.

57:41SPEAKERBut, you know, it's a less is more situation.

57:43SPEAKERI think they're I at some point, I should watch Jaws.

57:46SPEAKERI feel bad now.

57:47SPEAKERProbably we should probably watch shows admitting that I've never watched Jaws.

57:50SPEAKERAnd then the last thing and I thought this was a Saturn five, too,

57:53SPEAKERbut it was not is Viking one launched in August.

57:57SPEAKERViking, if you if you don't know,

58:00SPEAKERwas the first successful landing on another on Mars by America, by us.

58:07SPEAKERMaybe the Russians had landed by then.

58:10SPEAKERI'm going to say a Titan Centaur rocket.

58:13SPEAKERNot to criticize 70s era NASA's naming schemes too much,

58:17SPEAKERbut maybe starting multiple famous projects with V at that time was not the best idea.

58:22SPEAKERYeah, it's probably because when you when you said Viking,

58:24SPEAKERI just thought Voyager and I couldn't.

58:26SPEAKEROh, could not distinguish when was Voyager was also around.

58:29SPEAKERVoyager was like 76 or 78 was when they launched those right around the same time.

58:33SPEAKERRight. Voyager launched because at the times they did, because they had

58:36SPEAKERplanetary alignments to let them do Holzman transfers to get and gravity gravity slingshots.

58:43SPEAKERSo they stole a little bit of momentum from Jupiter and Saturn to accelerate into the outer

58:49SPEAKERsolar system. And because we had those enormous rockets, we were able to do like able to add more

58:57SPEAKERDelta V than we would have been able to otherwise. Right. So, yeah, so the Viking was two parts,

59:04SPEAKERa lander and an orbiter. I didn't realize that the Vikings lasted, so they didn't move.

59:08SPEAKERThey just landed and they scooped directly underneath them.

59:11SPEAKEROkay. They had like a long arm that could scoop and it had like five,

59:15SPEAKERa very limited number of tools on the lander. It was phenomenally expensive for the time.

59:24SPEAKERAnd that's kind of it. Like they were looking for light signs of life.

59:31SPEAKERThey wanted to show that they could land. They had a bunch of, because they couldn't move,

59:35SPEAKERthey used a bunch of small rockets around that were just aimed out to not disturb the ground

59:41SPEAKERunderneath the lander as much as they could. Interesting.

59:45SPEAKERBut it's interesting. It's like, I don't know how they, like you think about how complicated

59:51SPEAKERthe landings are now for something like Perseverance. It's fascinating how primitive

59:56SPEAKERthis is in retrospect. The cameras on this thing were so slow at taking photos that the dust from

1:00:05SPEAKERthe landing was still visible on one half of the picture because of the way the scanning worked

1:00:11SPEAKERon the camera. So this was the first successful

1:00:15SPEAKERlanding of anything by anyone on another planet? I think it was the first successful landing of

1:00:20SPEAKERanyone on Mars is my understanding. Okay.

1:00:22SPEAKERCause I think they were sending stuff to Venus in the seventies as well, weren't they?

1:00:27SPEAKERYeah, the Russians send a lot of stuff to Venus. And the last time it lasted like five minutes.

1:00:32SPEAKERThey lasted not very long because Venus, it turns out is incredibly hostile to everything.

1:00:36SPEAKERIt is a hellscape. Yeah. But, but the Mars,

1:00:40SPEAKERthe Mars surface mission went for six and a quarter years. So 2,245 souls.

1:00:47SPEAKERThat's respectable. Which was only broken by opportunity in 2010.

1:00:52SPEAKERWow. That's very respectable. Yeah. Not bad. I remember these pictures of,

1:00:59SPEAKERfrom Viking are still striking to me. And it was originally the, here's the,

1:01:04SPEAKERhere's the fun thing. The, the politics that I don't think NASA involves itself in now.

1:01:08SPEAKERIt was originally supposed to land on July 4th, 1776, 1976, rather, which would have been the

1:01:16SPEAKER200th anniversary of the founding of the signing of the declaration of independence.

1:01:21SPEAKERThey had to delay until July 20th, which was the seventh anniversary of the Apollo landing

1:01:26SPEAKERbecause it was too, the original landing site was bad when they looked at the orbits.

1:01:31SPEAKERAs long as you can pull some anniversary out, you're fine.

1:01:34SPEAKERYeah. They just had to get, they just get us. Yeah. I just imagined Gerald Ford is standing

1:01:38SPEAKERin there and it's like, God dammit, get us a date. We just need a date. Dammit. I don't know why I'm

1:01:42SPEAKERdoing voices all of a sudden in this episode. That's how everybody talked in the seventies.

1:01:45SPEAKERYeah, exactly. I guess everybody was named Deke and they talk like that. I wish, I wish we had

1:01:52SPEAKERgood, like, I don't even have a good nickname opportunity with my two first names. Anyway,

1:01:57SPEAKERfirst episode of SNL, October 11th, maybe the last time SNL was reliably good. Also obvious jokes.

1:02:05SPEAKERSome parts of the eighties and nineties were okay.

1:02:08SPEAKERYeah. And Ben whoa, Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot.

1:02:14SPEAKERMandelbrot. We had, we had a discussion about this. Yeah. It seems everyone says Mandelbrot.

1:02:20SPEAKERYeah. And he says, and I mean everyone, but I did look up a video of the man himself saying

1:02:25SPEAKERhis own name and he said Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot. Benoit Mandelbrot.

1:02:29SPEAKERSo then you have to do the exercise. You say it the way that the person

1:02:32SPEAKERthemselves says it, even though everyone will say you're wrong.

1:02:35SPEAKERI personally believe that you say that the, the word, the way that the originator intended.

1:02:41SPEAKERYes. I, yes. That's why I say Jif. That's not.

1:02:46SPEAKERWhat's the term fractal. Yes.

1:02:49SPEAKERWhich turned out to be important for math and computers and,

1:02:53SPEAKERand also screen savers for stoners in the nineties.

1:02:56SPEAKERI mean, you say he coined the term was like the mathematical

1:02:59SPEAKERconstruct kind of understood and in use before that. And he just named it or did he also kind

1:03:04SPEAKERof develop the entire system? These are all fantastic questions,

1:03:07SPEAKERBrad. For a mathematician. Yeah. I mean, look, you can invent math.

1:03:12SPEAKERYou discovered. Oh, I know that. Oh, I know that.

1:03:13SPEAKERI'm just saying where was that model at least in use without a name prior to that or.

1:03:19SPEAKERThese are all very good questions, Brad. Did he do the whole soup to nuts fractal

1:03:22SPEAKERthing himself? These are all very good questions, Brad.

1:03:26SPEAKERCan you do as much, I mean, I know, so here's what I know about fractals. Like I, you know,

1:03:30SPEAKERI know that I've obviously seen the famous zoom of the Mandelbrot set, the infinite zoom.

1:03:35SPEAKERYep. And I know the fractals occur like endlessly in nature.

1:03:38SPEAKERYep. That's about all I've got.

1:03:40SPEAKERThat's what I got. Okay.

1:03:41SPEAKERThey're important for cryptography. Maybe. I don't know.

1:03:44SPEAKERInteresting. We should talk to a mathematician sometime.

1:03:47SPEAKERI think that's a great idea. I think we know a few.

1:03:50SPEAKERLook, we can find mathematicians. We got mathematicians for days.

1:03:53SPEAKERThat's right. So yeah, that's it for us this month, I guess.

1:03:57SPEAKERFor this week. This week. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for

1:04:00SPEAKERthis walk down memory lane. That's I mean, I don't remember any very much of this stuff.

1:04:04SPEAKEROh, 1975. What a heady year. What could have been.

1:04:08SPEAKERI mean, look, if, if, if it weren't for that S 100 slot, we could all have Mac books now

1:04:13SPEAKERthat you completely enabled to expand in any way at all.

1:04:17SPEAKERCan you just imagine.

1:04:19SPEAKEROther than using a series of proprietary dongles.

1:04:21SPEAKERIf the United States government had had onerous requirements for the analysis of traffic data.

1:04:28SPEAKERGod.

1:04:28SPEAKERIf traffic data had just gotten that lucrative government contract,

1:04:32SPEAKERhow different could things be now? What if instead of windows, we had roads?

1:04:37SPEAKEROh man.

1:04:38SPEAKERYeah. I got my browser in a road over here.

1:04:41SPEAKERThat's definitely the end of the episode. Thank you for listening.

1:04:45SPEAKERAs always, this is the part of the show where we think our patrons.

1:04:49SPEAKERVery special. Thank to our executive producer, to your patrons, the bunny fiend, Jacob chapel,

1:04:53SPEAKERtwinkle Twinkie and James Kamek. Thank you all so much. We appreciate you.

1:04:57SPEAKERWe and I'll also, of course, thank you to all of our patrons.

1:05:02SPEAKERWe've had a lot of new people come in, in the last week and it's been a little chaotic in there.

1:05:06SPEAKERSo I think we're going to, we're going to like, we have to add some more channels.

1:05:10SPEAKERBrad is the TPR.

1:05:11SPEAKERI almost just did it after you suggested it, but I figured we should at least discuss it first.

1:05:15SPEAKERAnd that is create a shitposting channel.

1:05:18SPEAKERI think, I think having a, I think,

1:05:20SPEAKERI think I'm going to turn off the ability to put attachments in the main general channel.

1:05:24SPEAKERThat might be the thing to do.

1:05:26SPEAKERCause I have to imagine it's a little intimidating for new people.

1:05:29SPEAKERYeah.

1:05:30SPEAKERBut the thing to do is to dig in to, if you're, if you're scared by general,

1:05:34SPEAKERjust go into the channel, a channel that looks interesting,

1:05:37SPEAKERlike old PC stuff will be popular this week because of the episode, I would bet.

1:05:42SPEAKERBut, but like there's a bunch of other topics of interest.

1:05:45SPEAKERAnd if there's something that we don't have in there that like,

1:05:47SPEAKERyou feel like you see people talking about in general, that would deserve its own channel,

1:05:50SPEAKEReven if it's like a relatively low traffic one, we can definitely add it.

1:05:53SPEAKERSo please let us know if you're in there.

1:05:55SPEAKERThose become great resources for those topics over time.

1:05:58SPEAKERI mean, we all, we have the number of times we've pulled ideas for an episode out of a conversation

1:06:04SPEAKERthat started in one of the discord channels as is, I mean, we've done a bunch that way.

1:06:08SPEAKERSo it's a, it's a two way street and I just like hanging out there,

1:06:11SPEAKEReven if I'm not able to post a whole lot.

1:06:15SPEAKERSo thanks to all of our patrons.

1:06:18SPEAKERIf you aren't a patron, you can find out how to sign up at techpod.com/patrion.

1:06:23SPEAKERSorry, patrion.com/techpod.

1:06:28SPEAKERWe haven't increased the prices yet.

1:06:30SPEAKERThat's going to happen soon.

1:06:32SPEAKERBut if you want to get access to the Patreon, to the discord, you can right now for two bucks a month.

1:06:37SPEAKEROr retool the tiers, I guess we should say.

1:06:38SPEAKERWe're not just, we're not just going to jack up the prices on the existing tiers.

1:06:41SPEAKERWe're going to like rethink, rethink the offering there.

1:06:44SPEAKERLike, like try to give you more for the money.

1:06:47SPEAKERMore good stuff and add some new bonuses.

1:06:50SPEAKERThe thing is, once you sign up, you're locked into that tier for as long as you want to stay on that tier.

1:06:54SPEAKERYeah, like we can't, we can't, we can't, if you're at the $2 tier, we can't start charging you $5.

1:06:59SPEAKERYou have to sign up to change the $5 tier.

1:07:01SPEAKERAnyway, that's it for us, I guess this month.

1:07:06SPEAKERHappy birthday.

1:07:07SPEAKERHey, thanks, man.

1:07:07SPEAKERI appreciate it.

1:07:08SPEAKERYeah.

1:07:09SPEAKERAnd thanks everybody for listening.

1:07:10SPEAKERWe'll see you all next week.