The Lab

Things you can operate

Track Record tells you what I’ve built. This is where you can use it. Every exhibit here is a working thing rather than a description of one — you press it, it does something, and it teaches you what it was like.

Exhibit 01
A History of the Interface
Nine decades, one band.
Eighty years of computing interfaces, followed through one band. The Meridians sell records — two one morning, three that afternoon — and every machine built since 1945 is a different way of adding that up. Nine working recreations: wire an ADD function out of switches, hand-assemble binary, punch a Hollerith card, type at a teletype, hold down a 1984 menu, get lost in a frameset, spin an iPod wheel, watch a like count change your judgement, and ask a text box what it can do.
9 decades · 10 pages · 39 sourcesEnter the exhibit

One exhibit at a time, finished before the next one starts. That is the whole publishing rule here.

Things you can operate

A History of the Interface