#history of computing

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A brass tide-predicting machine on a varnished bench, a steel wire running over a row of graded pulleys to a hanging counterweight, its pen arm caught mid-stroke laying a tide curve onto the turning paper drum

The Machine Before Electronics

Tide predictors, differential analysers, nomograms and fire-control computers were not curiosities on the way to the transistor. They were a working tradition with its own theory of what a number is.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 9, 2026 · 20 min read

The long interior of a ropewalk seen down its length, with a wheeled traveller cart caught part-way along the walk and yarn still forming behind it

Foundation Models

From n-Grams to Reasoning Models: A Technical History of the Language Model

The line from Shannon's letter counts to trained deliberation is usually told as one long scaling curve. It was not. It was a sequence of specific bottlenecks, each named, each broken by a different idea.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 8, 2026 · 16 min read

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