28th February 1957: Project leader on Electronic Reading Automaton George Norrie in front of the scanner of the Solartron Reading Machine. (Photo by Ron Burton/Keystone/Getty Images) It’s axiomic ...

One of Audrey Watters’s observations in her deeply researched Teaching Machines is that ed-tech evangelists seldom make an effort to learn the history of educational technologies. For those ...

“Find the note, and then deviate,” urges experimental animator Jodie Mack. The colorfully clad artist is a third of the way through her antic presentation to the November 2021 Film Friends gathering ...

To its 5,000 salesmen across the U.S., Grolier Inc., publisher of America’s oldest encyclopedia, last week handed out an odd-looking new product to sell door to door. A green, windowed, sheet-metal ...

From the 1920s American psychologists experimented with teaching using machines. Inspired, in part, by the expansion of schooling, especially at the secondary level; the success of paper-and-pencil ...

As I was reading Audrey Watters’s Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, recently published by MIT Press, the word “landmark” kept occurring to me.[1] This is a landmark book. It is ...

A simple machine is a tool that helps us do work. They use clever shapes to help us move, lift, cut and other types of work. Learn more about the inclined plane, the pulley, the lever, the wheel and ...