Adam Williams

Adam Williams is a journalist from North Wales, regularly covering music and technology for websites such as Make Tech Easier, Mac.Appstorm, iPad.Appstorm and Fluid Radio, in addition to writing weekly content for Apple Magazine. Follow him or contact him on twitter here

The IBM 305 RAMAC stayed in production until 1961, weighed more than a ton, stored five million characters on fifty spinning platters, and still drew customers because the alternative was a room full of punched cards

Jun 4, 2026

A close-up of a vintage vinyl record in black and white, emphasizing its grooves.

In 1977, Ann Druyan recorded an hour of her brainwaves and heartbeat two days after she and Carl Sagan agreed to marry, and NASA pressed the compressed minute onto Voyager’s Golden Record as a private love signal now more than 25 billion kilometres from Earth

Jun 4, 2026

Every Apollo guidance computer that flew to the Moon had its software literally woven by hand at a Raytheon factory outside Boston, where women threaded copper wire through tiny magnetic cores to encode each bit as either a one or a zero, a process the engineers nicknamed LOL memory for Little Old Lady.

Jun 4, 2026

Black and white image of a vintage military aircraft parked outdoors.

When Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko landed a top-secret MiG-25 at a Japanese airport in September 1976, American engineers tearing it down expected to find titanium and microchips, and instead they found vacuum tubes, rivets popped by hand, and a stainless steel airframe so heavy it could only fly fast in a straight line.

Jun 4, 2026

When survivors near Lake Nyos woke on the morning of 22 August 1986, the cattle were dead in the fields, the birds had fallen out of the trees, and 1,746 of their neighbours were lying where they had stood the night before, with no fire, no flood, and no wound to explain it.

Jun 4, 2026

In 1959, a Soviet research team in Novosibirsk began breeding silver foxes for nothing but tameness, and within forty generations the animals had floppy ears, curled tails, piebald coats, and a bark, traits no one had selected for but which appeared on their own once fear was removed.

Jun 4, 2026

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Adam Williams

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The IBM 305 RAMAC stayed in production until 1961, weighed more than a ton, stored five million characters on fifty spinning platters, and still drew customers because the alternative was a room full of punched cards

In 1977, Ann Druyan recorded an hour of her brainwaves and heartbeat two days after she and Carl Sagan agreed to marry, and NASA pressed the compressed minute onto Voyager’s Golden Record as a private love signal now more than 25 billion kilometres from Earth

When survivors near Lake Nyos woke on the morning of 22 August 1986, the cattle were dead in the fields, the birds had fallen out of the trees, and 1,746 of their neighbours were lying where they had stood the night before, with no fire, no flood, and no wound to explain it.

In 1959, a Soviet research team in Novosibirsk began breeding silver foxes for nothing but tameness, and within forty generations the animals had floppy ears, curled tails, piebald coats, and a bark, traits no one had selected for but which appeared on their own once fear was removed.