The Weavers: Memory and the Moon
In 1965, engineers were building a computer to fly men to the moon. It had to survive a rocket launch and the vacuum of space. It could not be erased by a power failure, a hard landing, or anything sh…
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Episodes
Stories about the surprising origins and hidden histories woven into computing history. Every other week, a new chapter.
I’m Not a Robot: The Internet's Human Test
You’ve done this so many times you don’t think about it anymore. A box appears. You squint at some blurry letters, type them out, check the box. It takes about ten seconds.You probably didn’t know tha…
The Silent Duel: David Blackwell and the Math Inside AI
Two people walk toward each other on a dirt road. One bullet each. In a normal duel, a missed shot makes a sound. But in a silent duel, a miss would be invisible. You wouldn't know if your opponent wa…
Strangers with Keys: A Ritual to Secure the Internet
Four times a year, a small group of people fly to a secure facility in either Virginia or California. They submit to retina scanners and palm readers. They enter a metal cage in a signal-proof room. T…
Poison in the Cache: Dan Kaminsky Saves the Internet
Every time you type a web address, you're trusting a directory. A vast, invisible system that translates the names you know into the numbers that actually move data across the internet. You trust it t…
Lipstick and Runes: Hedy Lamarr and the History of Bluetooth
Look at your phone settings. There's a small angular icon there that you've probably never thought about much. It's a bind rune showing two characters from the ancient Younger Futhark alphabet, fused…
Drink Me, Eat Me, README: What Programmers Learned from Alice in Wonderland
Every software project has one. It's easy to scroll past. Most of the time it's just a manual telling you system requirements, installation steps, and known bugs. But the README file owes a debt to Le…
The Bug, The Cat, and The Wooden Mouse: The Unexpected History of the Computer Mouse
In 1968, a researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage in San Francisco and showed a thousand computer professionals something they had never seen: text editing, clickable links, and video confe…
UFOs, Model Trains, and Code's 'Sacred Syllable': The Origins of Foo
Every programmer knows 'foo' as the "insert name here" of software development. But where did it come from? And what does it have to do with 'bar'?In this episode, we trace the history of foo in progr…
Trailer: Unexpected Stories from Computing History
Every line of code has a story. Most of us just never hear it. Found in the Machine is a narrative technology podcast about the forgotten history of computing, software, and the internet. Each episode…