Jul 11 2023 47 mins
The girls talk cricket before launching into the final episode of this Education Computers season! We're heading over to New Zealand and talking about the Poly-1. It's another homegrown micro computer destined for schools and funded by a government program, but this one was crushed by corporate (specifically... Apple) interference. Before its time (and 18 months before the BBC micro), we plot its rise and then its downfall which coincided with some pretty dark moments in recent history.
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Main research for the episode was done by Camila. Ana audio edited.
Music by Nelson Guay (SoundCloud: fluxlinkages)
OFtC is a sister project of the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Research:
Poly Preservation Project: http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/homepages/andrew/poly/Poly.htm
https://collection.motat.nz/objects/22214/computer-poly1
https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/collection/poly1.htm
https://www.creationz.co.nz/kiwinuggets/2007/03/poly-1-educational-computer_07.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060424190744/http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3645342a28,00.html
http://www.ourdigitalheritage.org/archive/playitagain/the-poly-computer-nzs-purpose-built-school-computer/
https://twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/status/1644453795953246209
http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/homepages/andrew/papers/2010-5.pdf
http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article050106.html