A Little More Web Kipple
Whilst trying to track down the cost of memory for a PDP-11 I stumbled across The PDP-11 FAQ and it’s rather excellent collection of early 70s PDP-11 price lists. It’s a fun little list, rammed through of interesting little nuggets – today it’s hard to imaging it but in 1972 a line printer would have set you back at least 12,000 USD. That’s almost 92,000 USD in 2025 prices!
Continue reading “The cost of a PDP-11 circa 1971”
This is interesting; Heresy, witchcraft, Jean Gerson, scepticism and the use of placebo controls covers a late 16th Century French attempt to apply a proto-scientific method to demonic possession and, in effect, implement a placebo-controlled trial.
A lovely shot of the first Longships Lighthouse taken in the 1860s by William May. The long exposure fuzz on the ocean is an artefact of the then-available photography process rather than an artistic choice.
An interesting historic look by ITN at monitoring Mao’s China from 1967.
A little more from my trawl through “The North Eastern Railway – Its Rise and Development“ – this time it’s a nice (and, as far as I can tell, unique) shot of the Whitby, Redcar and Middlesbrough Union Railway’s viaduct over Staithes Beck, just south of the village itself.
Described as a ‘light iron viaduct of novel construction’, it has an almost American feel to it and looks very out of place look to the modern eye. Given the failure of that particular line – even before the car and the van out competed it – It’s certainly not something we’ll ever see rebuilt again.
Not quite a Tour of Old York but, whilst scrabbling around in the Internet Archives library, I came across two rather wonderful illustrations of the first York station and the sidings that used to extend towards Lendal Bridge.
It’s time for another little update and this time it’s 238 Ordnance Survey maps of various towns and cities across North Yorkshire.
Interesting map sets include:
It’s time for another little update and this time it’s 182 maps of Cardiganshire taken from the ‘Ordnance Survey Maps – 25 inch England and Wales, 1841-1952’ series.
Interesting places covered this update include:
And onto another Tour of Old York. This time our video comes courtesy of the British Pathe YouTube channel and brings us two and one quarter minutes of footage of York shot between 1930 to 1939.
It looks like Google Earth’s satellite view has updated to show some of the new work around the York Central development. The latest imagery is, as of writing, still about six months out of date – but you can really see how the area is starting to change in comparison to 2023 and 2022.
September 28th, 2024
June 16th, 2023
September 13th, 2022
