I hope that you enjoyed Saturday’s Mac Riddles, episode 19. Here are my solutions to them.

1: HyperCard
I was conceived during a trip (Bill Atkinson had the original idea when on an LSD trip), and although I can do almost anything (it has been used for almost everything) I remain truly WILD (it was originally named WildCard, and its creator code is ‘WILD’). My descendants include a foggy game (Myst was originally written in HyperCard), JavaScript (it was the inspiration for JavaScript), and several imitators (such as SuperCard), but I finally went in 2004 (last sold January 2004). What am I?

2: Ghostscript
Mene, mene, tekel, PostScript: the words “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin” were written by a ghostly hand at Belshazzar’s Feast. Ghostcript is a PostScript interpreter.

3: Which ancient analogue computer is thought to have calculated using base 6939.5 and more? Answer: The Antikythera Mechanism.
These are the remains of a geared instrument from around 100 BCE, which were discovered in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean from about 70-60 BCE. They are claimed to have been able to calculate Metonic Cycles, the approximately 19 year (6940 day) period over which the solar and lunar calendars repeat. See Wikipedia on the Metonic Cycle, and on the Antikythera mechanism.

I look forward to your putting alternative cases.