1970s
Before the Web: The Internet Built to Connect Computers
A reading of the Internet before the web through ARPANET, email, remote access and file transfer: uses that turned a research network into a communications infrastructure.
Everyday technology that transformed our routines
Latest additions
1980s
Television is preserved beyond the screen
The RTVE Archive and the Museo RTVE project show why preserving television means caring for recordings, documents, equipment and the context that gives them meaning.
Contemporary
Retro Doesn’t Return Unchanged: It Adapts to the Present
Commercial nostalgia rarely means bringing an object back exactly as it was. The available sources point to a more contemporary process: recovering familiar forms and references and connecting them to present-day needs, functions and desires.
1980s
The IBM PC 5150 didn’t start the story, but it changed its scale
Introduced by IBM in August 1981, the 5150 entered a personal-computer story that already had other protagonists. Its importance is better understood as a shift in scale and expectations than as an absolute point of origin.
1970s
Listening to music alone: what the sources tell us about the Walkman
The Walkman is often presented as a symbol of portable listening. Yet the available sources even disagree about its date: that discrepancy shows what we can—and cannot—claim about changing listening habits.
Before 1950
The automobile did not begin with a single idea
The available sources foreground Karl Benz’s 1886 patent, while also describing parallel developments and distinct industrial trajectories. Telling this history means distinguishing between a patent, a vehicle, an engine and a company.
1950s
What Remained After the Broadcast
In post-war Spain, demonstrating television and preserving its images were different tasks. The 1948 trials and the use of film recording until 1956 offer a few traces, but cannot fully establish what was broadcast or what was lost.
Contemporary
Digitising a Collection Is Not Enough If Its Context Is Lost
Digital archives can broaden access to collections and help preserve information. But their value also depends on how objects are documented, records maintained and the context needed to interpret them communicated.
1970s
Television is preserved too: tracing the TVE archive
Archives, historical studies and decade-by-decade retrospectives help reconstruct parts of Spanish television history, while also showing why it is important to distinguish surviving broadcasts from later accounts and documentary gaps.
1960s
Television is preserved too: what the TVE archive can tell us
The Televisión Española archive offers more than programmes to study: its media, equipment and documents show how television became technical and cultural memory, and why preservation requires context.
Contemporary
The past returns to the market, but never quite as it was
Nostalgia helps explain the appeal of retro products, but the sources also point to present-day needs: standing out, reinterpreting objects and bringing familiar design languages back into circulation.
Contemporary
A Computer in a Museum Needs More Than a Display Case
A computer preserved in a museum cannot be understood by appearance alone. Documentation of its provenance, condition, history and operation helps turn the object into a source of knowledge and clarifies what can—and cannot—be said about it.
