Author: Michael Sean Mahoney
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674055683
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Computer technology is pervasive in the modern world, its role ever more important as it becomes embedded in a myriad of physical systems and disciplinary ways of thinking. The late Michael Sean Mahoney was a pioneer scholar of the history of computing, one of the first established historians of science to take seriously the challenges and opportunities posed by information technology to our understanding of the twentieth century. MahoneyÕs work ranged widely, from logic and the theory of computation to the development of software and applications as craft-work. But it was always informed by a unique perspective derived from his distinguished work on the history of medieval mathematics and experimental practice during the Scientific Revolution. His writings offered a new angle on very recent events and ideas and bridged the gaps between academic historians and computer scientists. Indeed, he came to believe that the field was irreducibly pluralistic and that there could be only histories of computing. In this collection, Thomas Haigh presents thirteen of MahoneyÕs essays and papers organized across three categories: historiography, software engineering, and theoretical computer science. His introduction surveys MahoneyÕs work to trace the development of key themes, illuminate connections among different areas of his research, and put his contributions into context. The volume also includes an essay on Mahoney by his former students Jed Z. Buchwald and D. Graham Burnett. The result is a landmark work, of interest to computer professionals as well as historians of technology and science.
Author: Joy Lisi Rankin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674970977
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Silicon Valley gets all the credit for digital creativity, but this account of the pre-PC world, when computing meant more than using mature consumer technology, challenges that triumphalism. The invention of the personal computer liberated users from corporate mainframes and brought computing into homes. But throughout the 1960s and 1970s a diverse group of teachers and students working together on academic computing systems conducted many of the activities we now recognize as personal and social computing. Their networks were centered in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Illinois, but they connected far-flung users. Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how users exchanged messages, programmed music and poems, fostered communities, and developed computer games like The Oregon Trail. These unsung pioneers helped shape our digital world, just as much as the inventors, garage hobbyists, and eccentric billionaires of Palo Alto. By imagining computing as an interactive commons, the early denizens of the digital realm seeded today’s debate about whether the internet should be a public utility and laid the groundwork for the concept of net neutrality. Rankin offers a radical precedent for a more democratic digital culture, and new models for the next generation of activists, educators, coders, and makers.
Author: Paul E. Ceruzzi
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262532037
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
From the first digital computer to the dot-com crash—a story of individuals, institutions, and the forces that led to a series of dramatic transformations. This engaging history covers modern computing from the development of the first electronic digital computer through the dot-com crash. The author concentrates on five key moments of transition: the transformation of the computer in the late 1940s from a specialized scientific instrument to a commercial product; the emergence of small systems in the late 1960s; the beginning of personal computing in the 1970s; the spread of networking after 1985; and, in a chapter written for this edition, the period 1995-2001. The new material focuses on the Microsoft antitrust suit, the rise and fall of the dot-coms, and the advent of open source software, particularly Linux. Within the chronological narrative, the book traces several overlapping threads: the evolution of the computer's internal design; the effect of economic trends and the Cold War; the long-term role of IBM as a player and as a target for upstart entrepreneurs; the growth of software from a hidden element to a major character in the story of computing; and the recurring issue of the place of information and computing in a democratic society. The focus is on the United States (though Europe and Japan enter the story at crucial points), on computing per se rather than on applications such as artificial intelligence, and on systems that were sold commercially and installed in quantities.
Author: Gerard O'Regan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 144712359X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
This lively and fascinating text traces the key developments in computation – from 3000 B.C. to the present day – in an easy-to-follow and concise manner. Topics and features: ideal for self-study, offering many pedagogical features such as chapter-opening key topics, chapter introductions and summaries, exercises, and a glossary; presents detailed information on major figures in computing, such as Boole, Babbage, Shannon, Turing, Zuse and Von Neumann; reviews the history of software engineering and of programming languages, including syntax and semantics; discusses the progress of artificial intelligence, with extension to such key disciplines as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neural networks and cybernetics; examines the impact on society of the introduction of the personal computer, the World Wide Web, and the development of mobile phone technology; follows the evolution of a number of major technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft and Apple.
Author: Thomas Haigh
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262366479
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 545
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Book Description
How the computer became universal. Over the past fifty years, the computer has been transformed from a hulking scientific supertool and data processing workhorse, remote from the experiences of ordinary people, to a diverse family of devices that billions rely on to play games, shop, stream music and movies, communicate, and count their steps. In A New History of Modern Computing, Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi trace these changes. A comprehensive reimagining of Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing, this new volume uses each chapter to recount one such transformation, describing how a particular community of users and producers remade the computer into something new. Haigh and Ceruzzi ground their accounts of these computing revolutions in the longer and deeper history of computing technology. They begin with the story of the 1945 ENIAC computer, which introduced the vocabulary of "programs" and "programming," and proceed through email, pocket calculators, personal computers, the World Wide Web, videogames, smart phones, and our current world of computers everywhere--in phones, cars, appliances, watches, and more. Finally, they consider the Tesla Model S as an object that simultaneously embodies many strands of computing.
Author: Nicholas Metropolis
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 1483296687
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 714
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Book Description
History of Computing in the Twentieth Century
Author: Janet Abbate
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262534533
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
The untold history of women and computing: how pioneering women succeeded in a field shaped by gender biases. Today, women earn a relatively low percentage of computer science degrees and hold proportionately few technical computing jobs. Meanwhile, the stereotype of the male “computer geek” seems to be everywhere in popular culture. Few people know that women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing in both the United States and Britain. Indeed, programming in postwar years was considered woman's work (perhaps in contrast to the more manly task of building the computers themselves). In Recoding Gender, Janet Abbate explores the untold history of women in computer science and programming from the Second World War to the late twentieth century. Demonstrating how gender has shaped the culture of computing, she offers a valuable historical perspective on today's concerns over women's underrepresentation in the field. Abbate describes the experiences of women who worked with the earliest electronic digital computers: Colossus, the wartime codebreaking computer at Bletchley Park outside London, and the American ENIAC, developed to calculate ballistics. She examines postwar methods for recruiting programmers, and the 1960s redefinition of programming as the more masculine “software engineering.” She describes the social and business innovations of two early software entrepreneurs, Elsie Shutt and Stephanie Shirley; and she examines the career paths of women in academic computer science. Abbate's account of the bold and creative strategies of women who loved computing work, excelled at it, and forged successful careers will provide inspiration for those working to change gendered computing culture.
Author: John Cullinane
Publisher: Morgan & Claypool Publishers
ISBN: 1627055525
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
Smarter Than Their Machines: Oral Histories of the Pioneers of Interactive Computing is based on oral histories archived at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Included are the oral histories of some key pioneers of the computer industry selected by John that led to interactive computing, such as Richard Bloch, Gene Amdahl, Herbert W. Robinson, Sam Wyly, J.C.R. Licklider, Ivan Sutherland, Larry Roberts, Robert Kahn, Marvin Minsky, Michael Dertouzos, and Joseph Traub, as well as his own. John has woven them together via introductions that is, in essence, a personal walk down the computer industry road. John had the unique advantage of having been part of, or witness to, much of the history contained in these oral histories beginning as a co-op student at Arthur D. Little, Inc., in the 1950’s. Eventually, he would become a pioneer in his own right by creating the computer industry's first successful software products company (Cullinane Corporation). However, an added benefit of reading these oral histories is that they contain important messages for our leaders of today, at all levels, including that government, industry, and academia can accomplish great things when working together in an effective way. This is how the computer industry was created, which then led to the Internet, both totally unanticipated just 75 years ago.
Author: Paul E. Ceruzzi
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262310392
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
Discover the history of computing through 4 major threads of development in this compact, accessible history covering punch cards, Silicon Valley, smartphones, and much more. In an accessible style, computer historian Paul Ceruzzi offers a broad though detailed history of computing, from the first use of the word “digital” in 1942 to the development of punch cards and the first general purpose computer, to the internet, Silicon Valley, and smartphones and social networking. Ceruzzi identifies 4 major threads that run throughout all of computing’s technological development: • Digitization: the coding of information, computation, and control in binary form • The convergence of multiple streams of techniques, devices, and machines • The steady advance of electronic technology, as characterized famously by “Moore's Law” • Human-machine interface The history of computing could be told as the story of hardware and software, or the story of the Internet, or the story of “smart” hand-held devices. In this concise and accessible account of the invention and development of digital technology, Ceruzzi offers a general and more useful perspective for students of computer science and history.
Author: Dermot Turing
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
ISBN: 1788885554
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
Today computers shape every aspect of our lives. In our pockets, we carry mobile phones with computing power that was unimaginable just 50 years ago. Many industries are embracing the promises - and the risks - of artificial intelligence. The world is changing faster than ever, and computing is at the heart of technological development. Dermot Turing explores the history of this rapidly evolving technology, from the Charles Babbage and his experiments with steam powered calculators to the computerised Go champion, AlphaGo. Featuring wonderful, full-colour images which illustrate this history, The Story of Computing is the essential guide to a subject that none of us can ignore. Topics include: • The birth of the computer • Codebreaking in World War II • Innovations in hardware and software • Artificial intelligence • The internet • The challenges of cybersecurity.
