John Graham-Cumming

On this episode of On the Metal, we interview John Graham-Cumming. Some folks might know John as the CTO of Cloudflare, but he is also a great source of knowledge about computer history including Turing, Babbage, and Lovelace. Join us as we step back in time and learn about how John got started in computers, hacking his school's network to make his own network faster, and all sorts of details of computing history.

Show Notes

You can find John on Twitter at [twitter.com/jgrahamc](https://twitter.com/jgrahamc).

- Babbage overview and the Difference Engine:

    https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/overview/

- Difference Engine No. 2 at the London Science Museum:

    https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co526657/difference-engine-no-2-designed-by-charles-babbage-built-by-science-museum-difference-engine

- BBC Micro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro

- Sinclair ZX81: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

- BBC Micro Advanced User Guide:

    http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essentials/BBC%20Microcomputer%20Advanced%20User%20Guide.pdf

- Sharp MZ-80K: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_MZ

- John's TED Talk, The greatest machine that never was: https://www.ted.com/talks/john_graham_cumming_the_greatest_machine_that_never_was

- Hilbert's Problems: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HilbertsProblems.html

- Gödel's incompleteness theorems: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/

- The Lovelace–De Morgan mathematical correspondence - A critical re-appraisal: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0315086017300319

- The mathematical correspondence of Ada Lovelace and Augustus De Morgan:

    https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2867731.2867738

- Douglas Engelbart: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Douglas-Engelbart

- "Mother of all demos": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

- John's OSCON talk "Turing's Curse": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVZxkFAIziA

- Design of the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture:

    https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~krste/papers/EECS-2016-1.pdf

- Engines of Creation - The Coming Era of Nanotechnology: https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Creation-Nanotechnology-Scientific-Revolution/dp/1872180469/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

What is On The Metal?

As a part of starting Oxide Computer Company, Bryan Cantrill and Jess Frazelle decided to also create the podcast that they always wanted. Joined frequently by their boss, Steve Tuck, Bryan and Jess interview incredible guests retelling stories of adventure at the hardware/software interface. It’s unapologetically technical and as Jess says, “the nerdiest podcast on the face of the planet” -- but if you're their kind of nerd, you'll find yourself hanging on every word!