Wouldn't recommend starting of with a <insert item of interest> standards committee. Do learn way more than ever thought possible / would want to know about <insert item of interest> that people feel are relevant to given standard committee is in charge of.
One approach: Pick something that was at the time 'state of the art' and envision what would constitute 'state of the art' today. 1800's good for steam punk approach. Describe what existed at the time of 'original state of the art' and how that changed to current state of the art aka standards, techniques (black smith to all digital chip/embedded laser scan). Learn quite a bit about how things came to be & underlying abstractions/standards that 'simpify'/'unify' things.
Keep open mind about Alexander Fleming approach to 'bugs' in an experiment. (did that old ME design bug faithfully get replicationed in the software, intentionally or unintentionally?)
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** 1800's telegraph engineer solution to needing multiple telgraph wires vs. current version of usb
1800's fax : https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/the-fax-machines-of-the-1800s/
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** K&R C vs. Published C standards (iso or otherwise) always fun way to find intersting things to explore (applied to hardware or not hardware applied).
** RFC's bit less 'wordy'.
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** awk progam(s) to use/interpret BNF in real time to provide "modern" constructs for awk programming. (or impliment way to read/interpret lambda expressions in awk to extend awk)
** ( as a learning tool/approach a scaled/toy awk scripted version of dbos )
dbos : https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=dbos
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** Nipkow mechanical tv 1920's vs. python/pi implimentation! (or Philo Farnsworth's take)
mechanical tv : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-wbfP1pmVw
Farnsworth : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth
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** foucault's measurements vs. LIGO vs. Fizeau Apparatus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_measurements_of_the_speed_of_light
measuring speed of light : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-wbfP1pmVw
LIGO : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO
Fizeau Apparatus : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMO9uUsjXaI
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** MUMPS vs. current 'concurrent' databases (postgres).
MUMPS : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
One approach: Pick something that was at the time 'state of the art' and envision what would constitute 'state of the art' today. 1800's good for steam punk approach. Describe what existed at the time of 'original state of the art' and how that changed to current state of the art aka standards, techniques (black smith to all digital chip/embedded laser scan). Learn quite a bit about how things came to be & underlying abstractions/standards that 'simpify'/'unify' things.
Keep open mind about Alexander Fleming approach to 'bugs' in an experiment. (did that old ME design bug faithfully get replicationed in the software, intentionally or unintentionally?)
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### ### ### ### ### ###How to loop in a loopless language might be useful for going from "spinning disks" to 'trees' : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzsxO79zxS8