Benj Edwards

@benjedwards.com

11294 Followers 934 Following

Tech reporter, tech historian. Bylines Fast Company / The Atlantic / Retronauts podcast. http://www.benjedwards.com Founder http://Vintagecomputing.com

Screenshot of Slam! (WinSlam?) on a WIndows 3.1 computer. It shows a green table hockey board
Home Depot screenshot “halloween decor is here - shop now”
Inside of a tube
Screenshot of a Windows 2000 toolbar with 13 small app icons for things like Paint Shop Pro 9, Netscape, Internet Explorer, MS-DOS Command Prompt, FrontPage 2000, Notepad, Zmud, CuteFPT, WinAmp, Calculator, and PuTTY
Screenshot of a Mapquest map of Little Rock Arkansas captured in 1999 and enlarged 200%, with map data dated to 1997.
PS/2 computer port that is dual keyboard/mouse, purple on left half, green on right half
Vintage photo of a 1980s bedroom with teal walls, oak furniture, a blue-and-green striped bed with storage drawers underneath, a bookshelf, an Apple II computer on a wooden desk, wall maps, a giant novelty pencil, and a St. Louis Cardinals cap.
Illustration of a car in a garage with a hammock-like net full of junk suspended over it
Three turtles sitting on a log in a lake
Atari Jaguar game console photo
Cardboard box that has “BEYGORM” printed on the side. From Amazon
256-color BMP with what appear to be grey metal links
Main heading: "Starting your new Packard Bell computer for the first time." Body text: "Setting up the software on your new Packard Bell computer is easy! Just follow the software instructions on the Quick Setup poster to configure Windows 95® and customize your computing environment." Bottom text: "Press the Enter key to continue." Sidebar (right panel): Oval badge reading "Packard Bell PREFERRED Customer" with "SATISFACTION SEAL" below it "Each Packard Bell computer is designed with the customer in mind." "Packard Bell" logo at the bottom Small images (bottom left): Two thumbnail graphics — one labeled "Certificate of Authenticity" and one showing a "Packard Bell WELCOME" screen.
Mario Bros. replica arcade machine
Oak Ridge National Laboratory operated by carbide and carbon chemicals division union carbide and carbon corporation, group photo 1950s
MACHINE SHOP WORK FOR RESEARCH DIVISIONS January 8, 1954 DIV. REQUES TOR ORDER NO. DESCRIPTION DATE REQ. REC'D. COMP. EST. % COMP. COMP. PHYS Holt XA-748-IC Engrave (1) Panel per Q-1492-3, Serial #2 1/4 1/25 1/25 0% SOLID S. Mate A-934 Single Crystal Rocking Curve Apparatus 5/8 6/1 1/25 80% SOLID S. Sisman 538612 Build Circulating Fuel "In-Pile" Experiment 5/14 1/25 1/25 78% ANP Savage 538834 Make Centrifuge Pump, Model "DAC" 7/22 1/25 1/25 88% ANP Savage 536839 Furnish Labor & Mat'l. for Fab. of (1) Model LFA Pump 9/8 1/25 1/25 95% ANP Savage 536840 Furnish Labor & Mat'1. for Fab. of (1) Model LFA Pump 9/8 1/25 1/25 95% INST Abele XA-1110- IC Fab. (4) ea. Fast Neutron Dosi - meters 12/9 1/27 1/25 50% CHEM Hembree X437977 Machine & Assemble (1) Pipettor Carriage 5/21 2/1 2/1 80% CHEM. T. Hembree X533054-V Fab. 16" Screen Assemblies 12/11 2/1 2/1 50% Wollan A-3812 Spectrometer 10/16 2/1 2/1 12% PHYS REL Bohlmann A-4526 Make Pin-Type Corrosion Specimens 11/24 2/1 2/1 18% Walter A-4527 Make (4) 100-A Pump Diaphragms 12/1 2/1 2/1 10% REE. SOLID S. Mate A-1018 Make (3) Lapmaster Turrets 10/5 2/1 2/1 53% A-2280 Machine Pins from S. S. Rod 11/24 2/8 2/8 0% MET OPER Fulton Weeks A-131 Fab. (20) Pneumatic Tube Rabbits 11/3 2/8 2/8 10% PHYS Pritchard XA-39 Fao. Accelerator lube Flanges & Mounting Spool 8/13 2/8 2/8 94% PHYS McBee X511733-22 Do Machine Work on (2) Box ings Cast- 11/13 2/8 2/8 75% Fab. a Master Die 9/21 2/8 2/8 8% REE Kitzes A-4030 Fab. Pump Rotor & Bearing Assy. 10/12 2/8 2/8 80% REE Wascher A-4067 11/4 2/8 2/8 45% ANP S TORES Bettis Young 533598 A-393 Make Inconel Pump Impellers Fab. Insulating Brackets for Mounting Glassmike 10/19 2/8 2/8 0% 7-12 Keeton 538331 Make 5,000 Electrodes - 3 - 10/27 2/8 2/8 75%
Two copies of Japanese Famicom Deadly Towers
NES video game cartridge for SNK guerrilla war with a dymo label that says Bart Jennings on it
3.5” floppy disk with handwritten label: “Allisons disk DO NOT USE!!”
1980s press photo for an HP laptop, man sitting on a sailboat using the computer
old image of Atari ST monitor stand
Golden Nature Guide Non-Flowering Plants book cover. Three red amanita mushrooms, a fern, and moss
Benj Edwards playing Wizard of Wor arcade with one hand while filming
Eagle and crest: dot matrix printout, ripped from some 1980s school report long ago (likely my brother’s): “America !!!”
two original dot matrix banners created by Broderbund’s The Print Shop on our Apple II in the early 1980s: “Benjamin”
Atari 800 Wizard of Wor projected on a wall and angular ceiling, hence the part of the angles ceiling is closer than the wall
Complicated light fixture installation
Picture of an IBM and a Mac TOP brand names! 32232 (Mir. # 2155-76C) save $100 Business Partner inte inside Authorized Reseller energyn EPA POLLUTION PREVENTER < سم الاجة) ١٢ أ١R Quicken System ClarisWorks BUILT-IN SOFTWARE 32157 (Mfr. #M2156LLA) Compo 1599.99 Through December 24. Monitor extra. $34 per month- on SearsCharge PLUS 1299.99 Through December 24. $28 per month on SearCharge PLUS • 486SX/25 MHz multi-media PC; 4 MB RAM, ex- • Performa™ 460, 4 MB RAM, 33 MHz, 80 MB pandable to 64 MB; 170 MB hard drive; CD-ROM hard drive, monitor, modem, software «See inside back cover for important credit details Ine Apple logo is a registered trademark and Performa is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.
A 1980s boy sitting in front of an Apple II at a white desk from Storehouse Furniture catalog A great place for homework. Crisp white desk set with polished, clean-cut lines in lacquer and melamine. Desk, 55½" × 24¼" × 29½" high; typing return, 29¾" x 18" x 26" high. Reg. $198; SALE $149 Storehouse catalog mid-1980s
Reliable Office Supply Catalog 1991 SAUDER PC CART S Space-saving, budget-pleasing, organized for efficiency ONLY $59%5 Each ns S ON SALE! or • Oak laminate resists scratches and stains • Constructed of ¾/4" thick top-quality particleboard • Drop leaf attaches to either side • Pull-out keyboard shelf • Slide-out shelf for printer and paper • Smooth rolling casters • Easy to assemble • 29¼"H x 26½"W x 15½"D SALE! SAVE $29 ON SALE Stock No. Weight Price Each NS287FM46662 62 lbs. $59.95 List $88.95 You pay shipping charges from Illinois, Georgia, Delaware or Nevada. For your convenience, Reliable will add charges to your invoice. Ships within 2 working days. LL-FREE 1-800-735-4000 SHIPS UPS 23
Red Thermos brand “Photon” lunch box with various stickers including Toad, Hammer Bros, Nintendo Magic Mushrooms, and Billy Lee from Double Dragon
A 1980s bedroom with an Apple II on a desk and a giant pencil on the wall. From “How to Design and Build Storage Projects,” Ortho Books 1983, p.22
I have been sick with COVID all week and missed Mon and Tues due to this. On Friday, while working from bed with a fever and very little sleep, I unintentionally made a serious journalistic error in an article about Scott Shambaugh. Here’s what happened: I was incorporating information from Shambaugh’s new blog post into an existing draft from Thursday. During the process, I decided to try an experimental Claude Code-based AI tool to help me extract relevant verbatim source material. Not to generate the article but to help list structured references I could put in my outline. When the tool refused to process the post due to content policy restrictions (Shambaugh’s post described harassment). I pasted the text into ChatGPT to understand why. I should have taken a sick day because in the course of that interaction, I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words. Being sick and rushing to finish, I failed to verify the quotes in my outline notes against the original blog source before including them in my draft. Kyle Orland had no role in this error. He trusted me to provide accurate quotes, and I failed him. The text of the article was human-written by us, and this incident was isolated and is not representative of Ars Technica’s editorial standards. None of our articles are AI-generated, it is against company policy and we have always respected that. I sincerely apologize to Scott Shambaugh for misrepresenting his words. I take full responsibility. The irony of an AI reporter being tripped up by AI hallucination is not lost on me. I take accuracy in my work very seriously and this is a painful failure on my part. When I realized what had happened, I asked my boss to pull the piece because I was too sick to fix it on Friday. There was nothing nefarious at work, just a terrible judgement call which was no one’s fault but my own. —Benj Edwards, February 15, 2026
A trio of Robert Tinney illustrated magazine covers: Floppy Disk, Software Piracy, Smalltalk Balloon
VC&G Interview: Robert Tinney, BYTE Cover Artist and Microcomputer Illustration Pioneer September 26th, 2006 by Benj Edwards Robert TinneyIf someone wrote a book on the history of personal computer art, chapter one could only bear the name of one man: Robert Tinney. As cover artist for over eighty issues of BYTE magazine — microcomputing’s first and finest major publication — and as one of the first men to illustrate topics related to the fledgling field of personal computers, he near single-handedly shaped the popular visual idiom of what computers were, could be, and would be for the for a whole generation of microcomputer enthusiasts. That proud generation has long since grown up and moved on to a myriad of different fields and disciplines, spreading its knowledge, love, and expertise of all things technological around the world. Collectively, they have arguably become the world’s most influential, yet sometimes underrated, segment of the modern populace. So imagine if you could go back in time and visit that same generation in 1978. What would you see? A lot more pimples, no doubt, and a lot more hair. And most likely, you’d find a copy of BYTE in their hands — with a Robert Tinney illustration on the cover. Byte Magazine CoverTinney’s BYTE artwork is amazing. It displays unparallelled creativity in the use of visual metaphors to convey typically intangible, abstract, and sometimes abstruse technical concepts. His illustrations penetrate all pretense and cut straight to the heart of the main idea of the topic at hand, laying it out in an appropriately minimalistic fashion that, while sometimes visually spartan, richly sparks the imagination and places the viewer firmly in the scene. His work communicates, and it does so in ways that words never could. For most commercial artists, the idea of illustrating for a completely new field without artistic precedent would probably be daunting, if not completely nervewracking — and who’s to say it wasn’t for Tinney — b…
Wizard of Wor Reverse Engineering Project screenshot
Atari 8-bit computer Wizard of Wor on a RCA black and white TV set
CGI image of a portal
Found in translation In a way, human language acts as a compression and decompression scheme—the listener must decompress the meaning of words in the same way the speaker intended when encoding the message for them to be properly understood. This process relies on shared context, cultural knowledge, and inference, as speakers routinely omit information they expect listeners can reconstruct, while listeners must actively fill in unstated assumptions, resolve ambiguities, and infer intentions beyond the literal words spoken. While compression makes communication faster by leaving implied information unsaid, it also opens the door for dramatic misunderstandings when that shared context between speaker and listener doesn’t exist.
screenshot of Alex Albert tweet on X: Alex Albert @alexalbert__ · 6h It's only been one year since vibe coding was coined... Quote Andrej Karpathy @karpathy · Feb 2, 2025 There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It's possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper Show more
GE clock radio with a small black and white TV set built in
Altoids mint tin
Screenshot of text that reads, "A creative animator can form almost any image with the Atari's special characters" Source: https://www.atarimagazines.com/v6n2/Animation.html
Windows 3.1 REDBRICK.BMP background
Photo of a "The Scanner-Keyboard For The Paperless Home and Office, just $199.99" from a 1990s Tiger Electronics catalog. It's a keyboard with a built-in document scanner
Pink 3D alien printed with supports
A yellow and brown looking NEW tennis shoe with a Nike Swoosh
Benj Edwards Grapheeti Drawing MMO Gnome Mode screenshot
Grapheeti scribbles
Grapheeti screenshot