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High risk, high return investments in whaling ships, such as the New Bedford, Massachusetts, provided a model for modern venture capital. Courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Venture Capital Builds The Modern World

The American method of high-risk, potentially high-reward investments has fueled innovation from New England whaling ventures to Silicon Valley start-ups.
by Tom Nicholas via American Heritage on January 1, 2020

The Histories Hidden in the Periodic Table

From poisoned monks and nuclear bombs to the “transfermium wars,” mapping the atomic world hasn’t been easy.
by Neima Jahromi via The New Yorker on December 27, 2019
Borden logo featuring the smiling face of Elsie the Cow in the center of a flower.

Who Was Elsie, Besides the World’s Most Famous Cow?

In the Great Depression, Borden sought a new spokescow to help preserve its traditional agrarian image.
by Livia Gershon, Anna Thompson Hajdik via JSTOR Daily on December 13, 2019

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy

The question of how to fix the tech industry is now inseparable from the question of how to fix late 20th century capitalism.
by Adrian Chen via The Nation on October 14, 2019

The Lines of Code That Changed Everything

Apollo 11, the JPEG, the first pop-up ad, and 33 other bits of software that have transformed our world.
by Thomas Haigh, Arthur Daemmrich, Mar Hicks, Charlton D. McIlwain, Chris Noessel, Molly Olmstead, Clive Thompson, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Elena Botella, Ellen Stofan, Jamie Zawinski, Jane C. Hu, Lav Varschney, April Glaser, Charles Duan, Aaron Mak, Amanda Levendowski, Ethan Zuckerman, Nikki Stevens, David S. Levine, P. W. Singer, Ari Ezra Waldman, Rusty D. Pickens via Slate on October 14, 2019
Lost World movie poster

The 1925 Dinosaur Movie That Paved the Way for King Kong

During a slow day at work, a young marble cutter named Willis O’Brien began sculpting tiny T-Rex figurines.
by Kristin Hunt via JSTOR Daily on October 10, 2019

The Failed Political Promise of Silicon Valley

Tech was meant to help us transcend our most intractable problems. What went wrong?
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on September 27, 2019
Black and white photo of locomotive on railroad tracks.

Camera and Locomotive

Railroads and photography, developed largely in parallel and brought about drastic changes in how people understood time and space.
by Micah Messenheimer via Library of Congress on September 18, 2019

Whose Apollo Are We Talking About?

A review of Roger D. Launius's "Apollo’s Legacy" and Teasel E. Muir-Harmony's "Apollo to the Moon."
by Asif Siddiqi via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 28, 2019

America's Decades-Old Obsession With Nuking Hurricanes (and More)

If you think dropping a nuclear bomb into the eye of a hurricane is a bad idea, wait'll you see what they had in mind for the polar ice caps.
by Garrett M. Graff via Wired on August 26, 2019
Sidney Hook speaking at the opening session of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin on June 26, 1950.

Is Science Political?

Many take the separation between science and politics for granted, but this view of science has its own political origins.
by Michael D. Gordin via Boston Review on August 20, 2019
multicolor illustration of Gmail icons, iMessage text boxes, reply arrows, and refresh arrows.

Was E-mail a Mistake?

Digital messaging was supposed to make our work lives easier and more efficient, but the math suggests that meetings might be better.
by Cal Newport via The New Yorker on August 6, 2019

Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake?

For a century, we’ve loved our cars. They haven’t loved us back.
by Nathan Heller via The New Yorker on July 22, 2019
The Turtle Submarine

The Submerged History of the Submarine

Submarines played a major role in WW I. But the first submersible was actually used, unsuccessfully, in the Revolutionary War.
by Matthew Wills, Frank Uhlig Jr. via JSTOR Daily on July 22, 2019

What John F. Kennedy’s Moon Speech Means 50 Years Later

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
by Marina Koren via The Atlantic on July 15, 2019
Sign for the Silicon Valley Financial Center.

The Hidden History of How the Government Kick-Started Silicon Valley

It’s time to move past the tech sector’s creator myths.
by Margaret O'Mara, Hope Reese via OneZero on July 8, 2019
A 1947 advertisement for the air conditioner featuring two women looking bemusedly at a new window unit.

The Unexpected History of the Air Conditioner

The invention was once received with chilly skepticism but has become a fixture of American life.
by Haleema Shah via Smithsonian on June 24, 2019

Full Metal Racket

A history sheds light on venture capital’s ties to the military-industrial complex.
by Jamie Martin via Bookforum on June 1, 2019

Simply Elegant, Morse Code Marks 175 Years and Counting

The code has undergone minor changes since its creation, but its use persists to this day.
by Eddie King via The Conversation on May 21, 2019
The Interface Message Processor that connected UCLA to ARPANET.

Communication Revolution

ARPANET and the development of the internet, 50 years later.
by Zoë Jackson via Perspectives on History on May 14, 2019

The Innovation Cult

The function of the "innovation" buzzword is to sustain the myth that business genius creates society’s wealth.
by John Patrick Leary via Jacobin on April 16, 2019

A Brief History of Porn on the Internet

Pornographers were in many ways the innovators who fueled the rise of the internet as we know it.
by David Kushner via Wired on April 9, 2019

A Social—and Personal—History of Silence

Its meaning can change over time, and over the course of a life.
by Jane Brox via The New Yorker on April 3, 2019

The Definitive Oral History of TiVo

How the original DVR paved the way for Netflix and the cord-cutter movement.
by Tom Roston via OneZero on April 2, 2019

Counter-Histories of the Internet

Our ethics and desires can shape digital networks at least as forcefully as those networks influence us.
by Marta Figlerowicz via Public Books on February 25, 2019
Photograph of a student using a teletype machine.

How Minnesota Teachers Invented a Proto-Internet More Centered on Community Than Commerce

Civic-minded Midwesterners realized that network access would someday be a necessity, and worked to make it available to everyone, no strings attached.
by Joy Lisi Rankin via Zócalo Public Square on February 21, 2019

Computers Were Supposed to Be Good

Joy Lisi Rankin’s book on the history of personal computing looks at the technology’s forgotten democratic promise.
by Gillian Terzis via The Nation on January 30, 2019
Row of suburban houses.

The Myth of "We Don't Build Houses Like We Used To"

The comment lament misses crucial context about the style trends and building materials of the past.
by Kate Wagner via Curbed on January 16, 2019

Time-Bombing the Future

Synthetics created in the 20th century have become an evolutionary force, altering human biology and the web of life.
by Rebecca Altman via Aeon on January 2, 2019
Douglas Engelbart wearing an earpiece, sitting at a computer, in 1968.

The Future, Revisited: “The Mother of All Demos” at 50

How the ’60s counterculture gave birth to personal computers and the vast tech industry that builds and sells them.
by Andy Horowitz via Los Angeles Review of Books on December 8, 2018
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