I read many computer books and magazines from the 60s, 70s and 80s. It is really interesting from many sides; some logic explanation books from that era I find better programming beginner explanations than modern books. Modern books usually skip rigid logic introductions but are more about tooling, hello world and then more examples of practically implementing working solutions with that knowledge. Which contains a lot of plumbing including logic but gives the beginning programmer the idea that low level stuff is somehow mashed in with the high level stuff. I had many juniors crash on that; they cannot keep them apart at first and worry about implementation details while the actual logic/algo basically has in no way at all formed in their head.
Even in asm books they would show flowcharts of the logic first and then try to implement those flowcharts while many modern things assume you have that global idea and jump right into the details.
I never sweat the details until I need to which seems to make me a child of those times, which I am of course.
On the flip side, these old books also discuss far more low level stuff, some to the gates level.
Somewhat related? "Soap Bubbles" (C. V. Boys) [1] was a book from over 100 years ago that reads like a series of lectures to a science class on the physics of soap bubbles.
I was impressed with the step-wise manner in which the book proceeds from simple observations of soap bubbles and how they behave in order to develop more complex theories as to why they behave that way and the physics behind it.
Similarly, vintage army videos about analog computers, mechanical couplings (hydraulic, differential) or even waves are extremely high quality. Practical yet precise enough.
I would suggest that perhaps the intended audience played a factor as well.
I picked up a series of books on vacuum tube circuits from the 1950's created by and for U.S. military personnel and it is probably the easiest and most digestible explanation on how vacuum tube circuits work that I have come across. Wonderfully illustrated with diagrams as well.
Would you be able to provide any sort of ISBN or document number for those books? The older references for RF are always of great quality. I haven't been able to lock down if it's because they were created when all the original research was done, or if because generating the diagrams was more labor intensive so greater care was taken.
I believe the difficulty of the past enforced a set of healthy constraints too. Today everything is organic and can be "fixed later" and few really put efforts to make it right in the first place. Value is in the mass.. like architecture.
I think the costs of a roll would be pretty small compared to the rest of the costs of production. Even today these are all considerations. It's costly to have to hire a team out for longer than you have to even if they use digital, or make people redo lines or spend more time editing things together you could have gotten in one take. Distributed product still has to be made with respect for the intended length of the video (e.g. is this a 5 min PSA or a 45 min training video? Do you want to host a 45 min long video?).
Yeah... I have watched so many corporate video addresses which just drone on and on and on, often with minimal production qualities too, like a webcam and questionable microphone skills.
These things would not have been filmed at all in the past, or they would have been much shorter. There would be a film crew. Someone doing the microphone setup and telling the subject to enunciate etc.
And us corporates would have watched it in the cafeteria before lunch on the 16mm projector.
The low barrier to entry today is wonderful, but it also means a lot of stuff made is just fluffy and not very necessary at all. I guess it's also easier to skip most of it, so there's that.
Exactly. I found myself fascinated about these vintage army videos. Vintage training videos from the 70s/80s are also very good. Compact, effective, no bullshit, and occasionally a sense of humor.
I also find a common theme in vintage training videos: They don't assume the audience is an idiot. I find that the more dumbed-down the information is, the less trust they placed in the audience, the more they felt complled to entertain rather than inform the audience, the worse the result is typically.
I find this to be true and very relevant in modern education. You don't need to gamify mathematics. You need to clearly communicate just how awesome and interesting mathematics itself is.
Agreed! I have a 6502 Assembly Cookbook from 1980. It is mostly about how to do floating point math on a 6502, and it is full of flowcharts which very cleanly introduce and build much more advanced concepts in a simple way. It was a wonderful bridge for me between application and theory when I read it ... 40 years ago as a highschool student without internet.
I will check tomorrow as I have these as actual physical books. The best one I have is a Dutch book but it might be a translation; I will try to find it.
Even in asm books they would show flowcharts of the logic first and then try to implement those flowcharts while many modern things assume you have that global idea and jump right into the details.
I never sweat the details until I need to which seems to make me a child of those times, which I am of course.
On the flip side, these old books also discuss far more low level stuff, some to the gates level.