Computing History: Film, TV, and Podcast Credits

Reminiscences

Of Mice and Men, interview for 99% Invisible podcast, re Engelbart vs Jobs (with Christina Engelbart). Episode 149, January 2015. Transcript and download of the recording also available.

Computer Animation in 1961 : Stanford Card Stunt (YouTube), Producer and Narrator. My short documentary film about the first digital computer program that allowed graphic designers to create raster-based two-dimensional color animations. September 2009.

At Stanford University in 1961, Larry Breed and Earl Boebert developed the Stanford Card Stunt Program to automate what had been a time-consuming manual process for student volunteers. Few published histories of computer animation mention this pioneering software.

Origins of the Apple Human Interface, Speaker (reminiscence with Chris Espinosa). Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California, October 28, 1997. Reposted on the Computer History Museum YouTube channel.

Film and TV Credits

The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (IMDB page), Interviewee. Three-part documentary about the development of personal computers through 1995. Produced by John Gau; directed by Paul Sen; hosted by Robert X. Cringely. 1996.

Originally premiered on PBS in 1996.

Available in 2023 on Curiosity Stream and Amazon Prime Video.

The Computer Bowl II: Part 2 (YouTube), Contestant. A computer trivia game, aired before a live audience as part of The Computer Chronicles, on PBS, 1990. Sponsored by the Computer Museum. (Also see the film’s IMDB page.)

  • West Coast team: John Doerr (Captain), Bill Gates, Stewart Alsop II, Charles House, and Larry Tesler.

  • East Coast team: Patrick (Pat) McGovern (Captain), Robert (Bob) Frankston, William Foster, Edward Fredkin, and Russell Planitzer.

  • Examiner: Mitchell (Mitch) Kapor

  • Host: Stewart Cheifet.

  • Judges: William (Bill) Joy and J. William Poduska, Sr.

  • Scorekeeper: Christopher Morgan

Winning trivia question (video starts at 24:36): Location of the cave which inspired the first computer game, Adventure.

For a written list of all the trivia questions and how the teams answered them, see Highlights from the second annual computer bowl, by Karen A. Frankel.

Pencil Test (IMDB page), Executive Producer. Created by Apple’s Advanced Technology Group. Directed by Galyn Susman; written by Andrew Stanton, Nancy Lasseter, and Galyn Susman. Premiered at SIGGRAPH 1988.

This film influenced the development of QuickTime. Citation: QuickTime’s Developers Reflect on Doing Digital Video in Software, IEEE Spectrum, March 2018.

Full video may be found on archive.org and Internet searches.