Found in the Machine

Daina Bouquin

Found in the Machine is a narrative podcast about the forgotten people, decisions, and accidents that quietly shaped the digital world.  If you've ever wondered who actually made the technology you use every day, and why you've never heard their name before, you'll feel at home here. This show is for the curious, not the credentialed. You don't need a technical background to follow along. You just need to be the kind of person who pulls on threads.  New episodes unearth human stories from computing history every other week. 

  1. 5d ago

    Out of Sync: The Internet and Father Time

    Every computer keeps its own imperfect clock, and every message between them takes time to arrive. Dave Mills spent four decades working out how they could agree on the time anyway.  In this episode    WWV: the radio station that has done nothing but announce the time for generationsDave Mills: the engineer who kept refining his work into his 80s, even after he could no longer see itNetwork Time Protocol: truechimers, falsetickers, popcorn spikes, and the kiss-o’-death packetHarlan Stenn: the collaborator who maintained NTP alongside Mills for decades without ever meeting him in person   Episode Music   Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0"L""You Are""A Vision of Light""MCCCXII"  Additional Audio   Jim Kalafut. (2025). WWV simulator [Web application]. https://wwv.mcodes.org/ Additional Reading    Hopper, N. (2022). The thorny problem of keeping the internet’s time. The New Yorker. https://archive.ph/oLnRAMills, D. L. (2003). A brief history of NTP time: Memoirs of an internet timekeeper. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 33(2), 9–21. https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/database/papers/history/history.pdfMills, D. L. (2004, February 26). Oral history interview with David L. Mills (A. L. Russell, Interviewer; OH 403). Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. https://conservancy.umn.edu/items/98c88808-93d7-45ca-bda1-5ef05f463824Mills, D. L. (2011). Computer network time synchronization: The Network Time Protocol on Earth and in space (2nd ed.). CRC Press.Mills, D., Martin, J., Burbank, J., & Kasch, W. (2010). Network Time Protocol version 4: Protocol and algorithms specification (RFC 5905). Internet Engineering Task Force. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5905Ost, L. (2019, October 1). NIST radio station WWV celebrates a century of service. Taking Measure. National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/nist-radio-station-wwv-celebrates-century-servicePlonka, D. (2003, August 21). Flawed routers flood University of Wisconsin internet time server. University of Wisconsin–Madison. https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~plonka/netgear-sntpProven, L. (2024, January 23). David Mills, the internet’s Father Time, dies at 85. The Register. https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/david_mills_obit/Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

  2. Oct 27

    Inheritance: The Arctic Code Vault

    Deep inside an abandoned coal mine in the Arctic, there are 186 reels of photographic film holding millions of software projects. Some of that code runs the internet. Some of it is unfinished homework. In 2020, GitHub put it all there, hoping it would survive for a thousand years. But how do you preserve software for someone who may never have seen a computer? And why go to such extraordinary lengths to save it in the first place?   In this episode The Arctic Code Vault: How an abandoned coal mine on Spitsbergen became a home for millions of software projects  Piql's photographic film: How microscopic mirrors, green light, and grains of silver can preserve digital information for ages  A guide for an unknown reader: The instructions, translations, and apologies left for whoever might eventually find the archiveAn unfinished project: A student's unexpected contribution to the vault, and a message for the evolved dolphins who might someday read it  Episode Music:   Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0The Woods Shall Wave on MountainsNegative OneAlone by the FireAdditional Reading bobbysq. (2020, July 19). [Reply to the discussion “Robotics repositories in the Arctic Code Vault”]. Chief Delphi. https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/robotics-repositories-in-the-arctic-code-vault/386554 CNCKing. (2023, January 23). Custom GitHub Arctic Code Vault fabrication. https://cncking.com/custom-github-arctic-code-vault-fabrication/ Evans, J. (2022, September 20). “If you don’t make it beautiful, it’s for sure doomed”: Putting the Vault in GitHub’s Arctic Code Vault. The GitHub Blog. https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/if-you-dont-make-it-beautiful-its-for-sure-doomed-putting-the-vault-in-githubs-arctic-code-vault/ GitHub. (2020, November 5). A guide to the GitHub Code Vault. https://github.com/github/archive-program/blob/master/GUIDE.md Metcalf, J. (2020, February 3). The Arctic Code Vault starts production and your open source projects are being archived. The GitHub Blog. https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/the-arctic-code-vault-starts-production-and-your-open-source-projects-are-being-archived/ Metcalf, J. (2020, July 16). GitHub Archive Program: The journey of the world’s open source code to the Arctic. The GitHub Blog. https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-archive-program-the-journey-of-the-worlds-open-source-code-to-the-arctic/ Piql. (2026, October 19). piqlFilm. https://piql.com/technology/film/ Piql. (2026, October 19). piqlWriter. https://piql.com/technology/writer/ Sabliński, J., & Trujillo, A. (2021). Piql. Long-term preservation technology study. Archeion, 122, 13–32. https://doi.org/10.4467/26581264ARC.21.011.14491 Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

  3. Oct 13

    Page Turner: Mary Jameson and the Optophone

    Edmund Edward Fournier d’Albe invented the optophone, then Mary Jameson spent six decades proving what it could do and helping shape what it became.   In this episode:   The exploring optophone: Fournier d’Albe’s 1912 selenium device for “hearing” lightMary Jameson: The blind reader who tested, taught, and tuned the optophone by ear, then helped shape the reading machines that followed.Reading by absence: Why the first optophone readers listened for the notes that disappeared.The black-sounding optophone: What happened when a second selenium cell let the ink itself make sound.Barr & Stroud: The precision optics company that worked with Fournier d’Albe and Jameson to turn a fragile prototype into a sturdier machine.  Episode Music:   Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0The Light's SuspectThe Promised Place Beyond the CloudsObliviousArchival Audio:    Chan, T., Goertz, K., Morgan, D., Murawski, V., & Sayers, J. (n.d.). [Video demonstrating the process of prototyping a reading optophone] [Video, Fig. 8]. In T. Chan, M. Mills, & J. Sayers, Optophonic reading, prototyping optophones. Amodern, 8. https://amodern.net/article/optophonic-reading/ Jameson, M. (ca. 1970). [Tape-recorded letter to Harvey Lauer comparing the British optophone and the visotoner] [Audio recording]. Harvey Lauer personal collection; digitized by Mara Mills. In T. Chan, M. Mills, & J. Sayers, Optophonic reading, prototyping optophones (Fig. 9). Amodern, 8. https://amodern.net/article/optophonic-reading/ Rubery, M. (2015, August 23). “How we read”: The optophone [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0wuIv1JVGU     Additional Reading:   Chan, T., Mills, M., & Sayers, J. (2018). Optophonic reading, prototyping optophones. Amodern, 8. https://amodern.net/article/optophonic-reading/    Fournier d’Albe, E. E. (1920). The optophone: An instrument for reading by ear. Nature, 105(2636), 295-296. https://archive.org/details/sim_nature-uk_1920-05-06_105_2636/page/294/mode/2up    Jameson, M. (1966). The optophone: Its beginning and development. Bulletin of Prosthetics Research, 10(5), 25-28. https://www.duxburysystems.org/downloads/library/history/va_1966_25.pdf    Mills, M. (2015, January 5). Optophones and musical print. Sounding Out! https://soundstudiesblog.com/2015/01/05/optophones-and-musical-print/    St Dunstan’s. (1954, February). Chairman’s notes. St Dunstan’s Review, 37(413). https://blindveterans.maxarchiveservices.co.uk/uploads/st_dunstans_review/0413_Feb_1954_compressed.pdf    Thomas, E. (2021, June 23). A century ago, the optophone allowed blind people to hear the printed word. IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/a-century-ago-the-optophone-allowed-blind-people-to-hear-the-printed-word    Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

  4. Sep 29

    With Heart: Emoji Interpreters

    In 1995, a tiny pixelated heart on a Japanese pager became the most important thing on the screen. When it disappeared, young people left. One man never forgot and went on to draw the original 176 emoji.      In this episode: Pocket Bells and goroawase: how Japanese teenagers turned numbers on pagers into a language of their ownThe heart: the small symbol on NTT Docomo's Pocket Bell, and what happened when a new business model took it awayShigetaka Kurita: the former pager salesman with no design training who was given five weeks to draw the original 12x12 pixel emoji for i-modeUnicode and HEAVY BLACK HEART: how emoji became part of a shared standard in 2010, and why the red heart carries such a strange formal nameThe Museum of Modern Art: how Kurita's designs became part of MoMA's collection, and why an emoji means whatever we make it mean     Episode Music: Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0PossibilityFreedom to SpeakBones   Additional Reading: McLaughlin, A. (2018, May 2). Emoji: Documenting design history’s accidental masterpiece. Design Week. https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/30-april-6-may-2018/emoji-documenting-design-history-accidental-masterpiece/ McCurry, J. (2016, October 27). The inventor of emoji on his famous creations and his all-time favorite. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/27/emoji-inventor-shigetaka-kurita-moma-new-york-text Museum of Modern Art. (2016). Inbox: The original emoji, by Shigetaka Kurita. MoMA exhibition page. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3639 Museum of Modern Art. (2025). Shigetaka Kurita: Emoji. 1998–99. MoMA collection entry. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/196070 Okada, Y. (2018, December 3). ポケベル全盛期、わたしは女子高生だった [I was a high school girl during the pager boom]. ITmedia NEWS. ITmedia article. https://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/article/1812/03/1181203094/ The Unicode Consortium. (2026). Unicode emoji (Unicode Technical Standard No. 51, Version 18.0). https://unicode.org/reports/tr51/  Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

  5. Sep 15

    Inflection: The Voder, Voderettes, and Voice

    In the summer of 1939, at the New York World's Fair, a woman sat beneath a three-story mural of a shouting man and shaped raw electricity into a human voice.    In this episode: Homer Dudley: the engineer who reimagined the human voice as a handful of numbers at Bell Telephone LaboratoriesThe Voder: The human-driven machine built to imitate the effects of the human vocal tractThe Voderettes: 24 telephone operators chosen from hundreds who practiced for more than a year to play the Voder Helen Harper: The Voder virtuoso who trained the other Voderettes to perform feats of mental gymnastics to make the machine speak.Episode Music Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0Building Nests in the RuinsKadupulThe Other SideOceans ApartBackground SoundsWR Sound Library. City Center Crowd Sound - No Copyright | Infinite. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/people-city-center-crowd-sound-no-copyright-infinite-wr-sound-library-553084/Astronaut Flute. The Marching Band. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/music/marching-band-the-marching-band-536193/Archival Audio MonoThyratron. (2011, July 9). The Voder - Homer Dudley (Bell Labs) 1939 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hyI_dM5cGo Additional Reading Schindler, G. E., Jr. (Ed.). (1982). A history of engineering and science in the Bell System: Vol. 3. Switching technology (1925-1975). Bell Telephone Laboratories. https://archive.org/details/historyofenginee0000unse_q0d8 Simon, S. M. B. (2025). Operation Voder: AT&T, Bell Labs, and the labor of techno-utopia at the 1939 New York World's Fair. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 47(2), 20-31. https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2025.3528717 Story B. H. (2014). Structure, Movement, Sound, and Perception. Perspectives on speech science and orofacial disorders, 24, 7–20. https://doi.org/10.1044/ssod24.1.7 Synthetic Sound Labs. (2017, December 14). Voder synthesis. https://steamsynth.com/history/voder/ Raphael, L. J., Borden, G. J., & Harris, K. S. (2007). Speech science primer: Physiology, acoustics, and perception of speech (5th ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. https://books.google.com/books/about/Speech_Science_Primer.html?id=AKaiz3TiIJ8C  Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

  6. Sep 1

    Dead Reckoning: The Globus and Voskhod 2

    In March 1965, two Soviet cosmonauts fell out of the sky into a frozen forest in the Urals, trapped inside a cramped capsule hundreds of kilometers from rescue. Their survival, and their journey home, relied on an intricate mechanical computer made of aluminum, clockwork, and paper.  In this Episode Laboratory 47: the branch of the Soviet Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, run by engineer Sergei DarevskyThe Globus: the indicator of position in flight, a paper-wrapped aluminum globe run by differential gears and cams with orbital curves ground into their edgesDead reckoning in spaceflight: why the instrument knew nothing it wasn't told and what that meant for the cosmonautsVoskhod 2: Pavel Belyayev and Alexey Leonov, a spacewalk that nearly ended in catastrophe, a failed automatic descent, and the forty-six seconds that decided where they landedEpisode Music Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0Satellites and WaterfallsSomething Beautiful is Going to HappenAlways Surrounded, Never ThereWho Will Listen on a Dying PlanetAdditional Reading Becker, J. (2026, June 7). Spaceflight mission report: Voskhod 2. Spacefacts. https://www.spacefacts.de/mission/english/voskhod-2.htm Leonov, A. (2005, January). The nightmare of Voskhod 2. Air & Space Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-nightmare-of-voskhod-2-8655378/ Shirriff, K. (2023, January 21). Inside the Globus INK: A mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight. Ken Shirriff's Blog. https://www.righto.com/2023/01/inside-globus-ink-mechanical-navigation.html Tiapchenko, Y. (2003). Information display systems for Russian spacecraft: An overview (S. Gerovitch, Comp. & Trans.). Computing in the Soviet Space Program, MIT. https://web.mit.edu/slava/space/essays/essay-tiapchenko1.htm Voskhod 2. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved September 1, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voskhod_2&oldid=1350315400 Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

  7. Aug 18 ·  Bonus

    Humans of Mortal Kombat

    Found in the Margins is a series of mini bonus episodes that will be available to Patreon members every other week alternating with the main show. This first episode is being shared here for all Found in the Machine listeners.  Join the Patreon if you'd like to continue hearing these bonus stories.  This episode explores the creation of Mortal Kombat, the strange reality of early video game digitization, and the landmark 1990s lawsuit that decided who legally owns a human body once it becomes pixels.  Episode Music Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0TricksFailures of InfinityTechno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat) by The Immortals via Luminous Ambition Additional Reading Pesina v. Midway Mfg. Co., 948 F. Supp. 40 (N.D. Ill. 1996). https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/948/40/2098879/Strata. (1994, July). [Advertisement for the arcade game BloodStorm]. EGM 2. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Daniel-Pesina-who-starred-as-Johnny-Cage-in-Mortal-Kombat-has-switched-to_fig11_357487546C-SPAN. (2013, November 27). 1993 Senate committee hearings on video game violence [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhwM3ZMTCR0-- Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

    Humans of Mortal Kombat

  8. Aug 18

    Cry Wolf: Waiting and Seeing with Camera Traps

    Since the 1890s, we've been building machines that wait in our place, in the dark, for something to move. This is the story of how a thread across a trail became a sensor that can feel heat, and what we learn when we really look.  In this Episode George Shiras: the Michigan naturalist and early wildlife photographer who rigged the first trip-wire camera traps in the 1890sPyroelectricity: the physical property that lets a crystal generate a faint electrical charge when its temperature changesThe Fresnel lens: how a design borrowed from 19th-century lighthouses now focuses invisible infrared light onto motion sensors in camera traps, driveway floodlights, and burglar alarmsThe Haíɫzaqv Nation's coastal wolfs: How a camera trap on the coast caught a wolf doing something scientists didn't know wild wolves were capable ofMachine learning classifiers: how citizen scientists trains algorithms to sort real animal sightings from the false alarms Colorado's gray wolf reintroduction: the closely monitored 2023 reintroduction effort and recent events  Episode Music Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0Hands Clasped at the End of the WorldMagentaThe Murky DeepStill Waters Keep Me AwakeYou Saw the Signs But Never Acknowledged Them Additional Reading Cecco, L. (2025, November 20). Raiders of the lobster pot: Wily wolves learn to haul in Canadian crab traps. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/20/canadia-british-coumbia-sea-wolves-learn-to-loot-crab-traps-for-bait Davenport, J. (2025, August 31). Wolf encounters & insights: 2025 newsletter. Churchill Wild. https://churchillwild.com/wolf-encounters-insights-2025-newsletter-by-jad-davenport/ Keller, H. J. (2000, May 11). 30 years of passive infrared motion detectors: A technology review [Paper presentation]. OPTO/IRS2, Erfurt, Germany. https://jvs.de/Carclo_Fresnel/pdf_content/2000-05_irs2paper_Hans_j_Keller.pdf Longwell, A. (2025, July 17). WATCH: Colorado Parks and Wildlife shares first footage of state's newest wolf pups. Vail Daily.  https://www.vaildaily.com/news/colorado-wolf-pup-video-routt-county/ Ross, T. (2026, August 10). Colorado hunter thought wolf shot and killed in January was a coyote. The Colorado Sun. https://coloradosun.com/2026/08/10/colorado-hunter-kills-wolf-thinking-it-coyote/ Shiras, G., III. (1906, July). Photographing wild game with flashlight and camera. The National Geographic Magazine, 17(7), 367–423. Shiras, G., III. (1908, June). One season's game-bag with the camera. The National Geographic Magazine, 19(6). Shiras, G., III. (1935). Hunting wild life with camera and flashlight: A record of sixty-five years' visits to the woods and waters of North America (Vols. 1–2). National Geographic Society. https://archive.org/details/HuntingWildLifeWithCameraAndFlashlight.Volume121935Copy Slade, R. (2026, June 4). The outdoorsman who made wildlife photography a big deal for National Geographic. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/george-shiras-iii-wildlife-photography -- Support the show 💚 This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.

See All (25)

Trailer

5
out of 5
10 Ratings

About

Found in the Machine is a narrative podcast about the forgotten people, decisions, and accidents that quietly shaped the digital world.  If you've ever wondered who actually made the technology you use every day, and why you've never heard their name before, you'll feel at home here. This show is for the curious, not the credentialed. You don't need a technical background to follow along. You just need to be the kind of person who pulls on threads.  New episodes unearth human stories from computing history every other week. 

Information

  • Creator
    Daina Bouquin
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Daina Bouquin
  • Show Website
    Found in the Machine

You Might Also Like