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How 1800s census screw-ups kickstarted America’s computing industry Remember punch cards? Of course you don’t Population growth The only use of the census clearly specified in the Constitution is to allocate seats in the House of Representatives. More populous states get more seats. A minimalist interpretation of the census mission would require reporting only the overall population of each state. But the census has never confined itself to this. A complicating factor emerged right at the beginning, with the Constitution’s distinction between “free persons” and “three-fifths of all other persons....

How 1800s census screw-ups kickstarted America’s computing industry Remember punch cards? Of course you don’t Population growth The only use of the census clearly specified in the Constitution is to allocate seats in the House of Representatives. More populous states get more seats. A minimalist interpretation of the census mission would require reporting only the overall population of each state. But the census has never confined itself to this. A complicating factor emerged right at the beginning, with the Constitution’s distinction between “free persons” and “three-fifths of all other persons....

How a 1930s Soviet miner helped create today’s toxic work culture Alexei Stakhanov is the reason you need to work late The superhero worker So, why does the specter of this long-forgotten miner still haunt our imaginations? In the 1930s, miners lay on their sides and used picks to work the coal, which was then loaded onto carts and pulled out of the shaft by pit ponies. Stakhanov came up with some innovations, but it was his adoption of the mining drill over the pick which helped drive his productivity....

How a 1930s Soviet miner helped create today’s toxic work culture Alexei Stakhanov is the reason you need to work late The superhero worker So, why does the specter of this long-forgotten miner still haunt our imaginations? In the 1930s, miners lay on their sides and used picks to work the coal, which was then loaded onto carts and pulled out of the shaft by pit ponies. Stakhanov came up with some innovations, but it was his adoption of the mining drill over the pick which helped drive his productivity....

How a 70s schoolteacher invented C, one of the most influential coding languages A tale of incredibly slow computers, three Davids, and the long-standing legacy of C The school teacher who was buddies with Alan Turing Meet Christopher Stratchey. Born 1916 into an influential British family, he studied at Cambridge University and got to know many a famous scientist there. However, he seemed to have a years-long tendency toneglect his studies, and his performance in the final exams was rather underwhelming....