README.md
A commit log for the history of computing.
earthputer treats computing as one long repository. Since Turing described a universal machine in 1936, people have been committing to it: new machines, new languages, new networks, the occasional bug fix. This site is the git log. 75 historical commits, plus 12 recent ones pulled from this month's tech news.
Reading the graph
Each coloured line is a branch. A dot is a commit on that branch. When a milestone fused two areas, a curve joins the lanes, the way a merge does. The World Wide Web, for example, is a network commit that merged in software.
- hardware machines, chips, storage and devices
- software languages, operating systems, compilers and open source
- network everything that moves bits between machines
- ai machines that learn, reason or pretend to
- culture the people, communities and rules around the machines
Eras are tags, from v0 (pre-release, 1936–1945) to v7 (the transformer era). The newest commits sit at HEAD. Hashes are real SHA-1 digests of each year and message, so a permalink never changes unless the commit does.
Shortcuts
j and k move between commits, Enter opens one, / searches, 1–5 filter a branch, ? lists everything.
Sources and honesty
Every commit links to a source. Historical dates follow the year most references cite; where a day is uncertain, only the year is shown. Recent news was checked against the original article before it went in. The commit messages are a retelling. If one is wrong, the linked source wins.