Computer Chronicles

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Computer Chronicles was an American television series that reported the advances in personal computers and software innovations for the business and home sectors during the 1980s and 1990s. The main moderator was Stewart Cheifet , who was supported in the first few years by his co-moderator Gary Kildall , the creator of the CP / M operating system and founder and CEO of the software company Digital Research . Over 300 television stations in the USA and more than 100 other countries worldwide broadcast the program from 1983 to 2002, with translations into French , Spanish , Chinese and Arabic . Around 2 million viewers saw the program every week.

The show was recognized for its professionally competent journalism . She has won various journalistic awards, including more than a dozen awards from the Computer Press Association. Computer Chronicles was based in the Silicon Valley area of California .

Some of the broadcast material was distributed to companies and educational institutions for the purpose of computer education. Large publishing houses also sold program clips together with books. In the meantime, all Computer Chronicles programs are also available on the Internet Archive and YouTube.

Content

The show presented many developments in the history of personal computers . Keywords in this regard include hard disks , graphics cards (2D to 3D), bus systems , processors , game consoles , screen technologies , operating systems , various software , Amiga , ATARI ST . Guests were almost always invited to the program and the moderators asked them about their areas of expertise. Among others, Alan Shugart ( Seagate ), Adam Osborne (Osborne Computer Corporation), Jack Tramiel ( Commodore Business Machines International and later Atari ) and many more. In the program, the topics were not only discussed, but very often also shown using direct examples.

Historically noteworthy is, for example, the conversation with Alan Shugart in the episode Storage Devices in 1984. Shugart was asked what the next technological level was in hard drives (current capacities at that time were 5 to 10 megabytes). He replied with Perpendicular Recording and also explained how it works.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stewart Cheifet: Computer Chronicles (Internet Archive). Retrieved December 16, 2019 .