The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal: Why Linn Was Right About Everything

The Computer at the Bottom of a Canal

I explore the story of the Rekursiv, a visionary computer built by the hi-fi company Linn Products in the 1980s. Designed to run object-oriented code with hardware memory safety and garbage collection, it was ahead of its time. Though the project failed due to economic shifts and the rise of RISC, its core ideas are now shipping in production silicon from Arm, proving the original team was right about almost everything.

"The story of the Rekursiv deserves to be more than just a curiosity, because almost forty years after it went into the water, its ideas are now shipping in production silicon from Arm."