Early British Computers

Early British Computers PDF Author: Simon Hugh Lavington
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719008108
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description

Early British Computers

Early British Computers PDF Author: Simon Hugh Lavington
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719008108
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book Here

Book Description


Milestones in Analog and Digital Computing

Milestones in Analog and Digital Computing PDF Author: Herbert Bruderer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030409740
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 2072

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Book Description
This Third Edition is the first English-language edition of the award-winning Meilensteine der Rechentechnik; illustrated in full color throughout in two volumes. The Third Edition is devoted to both analog and digital computing devices, as well as the world's most magnificient historical automatons and select scientific instruments (employed in astronomy, surveying, time measurement, etc.). It also features detailed instructions for analog and digital mechanical calculating machines and instruments, and is the only such historical book with comprehensive technical glossaries of terms not found in print or in online dictionaries. The book also includes a very extensive bibliography based on the literature of numerous countries around the world. Meticulously researched, the author conducted a worldwide survey of science, technology and art museums with their main holdings of analog and digital calculating and computing machines and devices, historical automatons and selected scientific instruments in order to describe a broad range of masterful technical achievements. Also covering the history of mathematics and computer science, this work documents the cultural heritage of technology as well.

Plasticity and Pathology

Plasticity and Pathology PDF Author: David Bates
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823266168
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
With the rise of cognitive science and the revolution in neuroscience, it is now commonplace to assume that the study of a human person—a thinking, feeling, acting subject—is ultimately the study of the human brain. In both Europe and the United States, massive state-funded research is focused on mapping the brain in all its remarkable complexity. The metaphors employed are largely technological: A wiring diagram of synaptic connectivity will lead to a better understanding of human behavior and perhaps insights into the breakdown of human personhood with diseases of the brain such as Alzheimer’s. Alongside this technologized discourse of the brain as locus of human subjectivity we find another perspective, one that emphasizes its essential plasticity—in both the developmental sense and as a response to traumas such as strokes, tumors, or gunshot wounds. This collection of essays brings together a diverse range of scholars to investigate how the “neural subject” of the twenty-first century came to be. Taking approaches both historical and theoretical, they probe the possibilities and limits of neuroscientific understandings of human experience. Topics include landmark studies in the history of neuroscience, the relationship between neural and technological “pathologies,” and analyses of contemporary concepts of plasticity and pathology in cognitive neuroscience. Central to the volume is a critical examination of the relationship between pathology and plasticity. Because pathology is often the occasion for neural reorganization and adaptation, it exists not in opposition to the brain’s “normal” operation but instead as something intimately connected to our ways of being and understanding.

Computing Perspectives

Computing Perspectives PDF Author: Maurice V. Wilkes
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080502687
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
In this insightful collection of essays, Maurice Wilkes shares his unique perspective on the development of computers and the current state of the art. These enlightening essays discuss the foundational ideas behind modern computing and provide a solid grounding for the appreciation of emerging computer technologies. Wilkes, one of the founders of computing, has provided enormous contributions to the development of computers, including the design and construction of the EDSAC computer and early development of programming for a stored program computer. He was responsible for the concept of microprogramming. Wilkes also wrote the first paper to appear on cache memories and was an early worker in the field of wide bandwidth local area networks. In 1992 he was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology. These essays will be of interest to everyone involved with computers and how they arrived at their present state. Wilkes presents his perspectives with keen historical sensibility and engineering practicality. Readers are invited to consider these observations and form their own perspectives on the present state of the computer art.

Computer Architecture

Computer Architecture PDF Author: Gérard Blanchet
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118577787
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This book lays out the concepts necessary to understand how a computer works. For reasons of clarity, the authors have deliberately chosen examples that apply to machines from all eras, without having to water down the contents of the book. This choice helps to show how techniques, concepts and performances have evolved since the first computers. The book is divided into five parts. The first four, which are of increasing difficulty, are the core of the book: “Elements of a Basic Architecture”, “Programming Model and Operation”, “Memory Hierarchy”, “Parallelism and Performance Enhancement”. The final part provides hints and solutions to the exercises in the book as well as appendices. The reader may approach each part independently based on their prior knowledge and goals.

Designing for Humans

Designing for Humans PDF Author: Jan Noyes
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1134588100
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Nature aside, the world in which we live should be designed for us, from everyday products like scissors and chairs to complex systems in avionics, medicine and nuclear power applications. Now more than ever, technological advances continue to increase the range and complexity of tasks that people have to perform. As a discipline, human factors psychology (ergonomics) therefore has an increasingly important role to play in ensuring that the human user's physical characteristics, cognitive abilities and social needs are taken into account in the development, implementation and operation of products and systems. In this book, Jan Noyes provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of human-machine interaction and the design of environments at work. Focusing on topics relevant to user-centred design, she includes coverage of the capabilities and limitations of humans, human-machine interactions, work environments, and organizational issues. Health and safety issues underpin a large amount of work on the human factors of design, and these are addressed fully throughout the book. Each chapter includes case studies that demonstrate the real-world relevance of the points being made and concludes with a list of key points. Although aimed primarily at advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in organizational and occupational psychology, this book will also be of relevance to students on engineering, computing and applied psychology/human factors programmes.

Programmed Inequality

Programmed Inequality PDF Author: Mar Hicks
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262535181
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.

Readings in Human-Computer Interaction

Readings in Human-Computer Interaction PDF Author: Ronald M. Baecker
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080515746
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 973

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Book Description
The effectiveness of the user-computer interface has become increasingly important as computer systems have become useful tools for persons not trained in computer science. In fact, the interface is often the most important factor in the success or failure of any computer system. Dealing with the numerous subtly interrelated issues and technical, behavioral, and aesthetic considerations consumes a large and increasing share of development time and a corresponding percentage of the total code for any given application. A revision of one of the most successful books on human-computer interaction, this compilation gives students, researchers, and practitioners an overview of the significant concepts and results in the field and a comprehensive guide to the research literature. Like the first edition, this book combines reprints of key research papers and case studies with synthesizing survey material and analysis by the editors. It is significantly reorganized, updated, and enhanced; over 90% of the papers are new. An invaluable resource for systems designers, cognitive scientists, computer scientists, managers, and anyone concerned with the effectiveness of user-computer interfaces, it is also designed for use as a primary or supplementary text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in human-computer interaction and interface design. - Human computer interaction--historical, intellectual, and social - Developing interactive systems, including design, evaluation methods, and development tools - The interaction experience, through a variety of sensory modalities including vision, touch, gesture, audition, speech, and language - Theories of information processing and issues of human-computer fit and adaptation

A Science of Operations

A Science of Operations PDF Author: Mark Priestley
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1848825552
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Today, computers fulfil a dazzling array of roles, a flexibility resulting from the great range of programs that can be run on them. A Science of Operations examines the history of what we now call programming, defined not simply as computer programming, but more broadly as the definition of the steps involved in computations and other information-processing activities. This unique perspective highlights how the history of programming is distinct from the history of the computer, despite the close relationship between the two in the 20th century. The book also discusses how the development of programming languages is related to disparate fields which attempted to give a mechanical account of language on the one hand, and a linguistic account of machines on the other. Topics and features: Covers the early development of automatic computing, including Babbage’s “mechanical calculating engines” and the applications of punched-card technology, examines the theoretical work of mathematical logicians such as Kleene, Church, Post and Turing, and the machines built by Zuse and Aiken in the 1930s and 1940s, discusses the role that logic played in the development of the stored program computer, describes the “standard model” of machine-code programming popularised by Maurice Wilkes, presents the complete table for the universal Turing machine in the Appendices, investigates the rise of the initiatives aimed at developing higher-level programming nota tions, and how these came to be thought of as ‘languages’ that could be studied independently of a machine, examines the importance of the Algol 60 language, and the framework it provided for studying the design of programming languages and the process of software development and explores the early development of object-oriented languages, with a focus on the Smalltalk project. This fascinating text offers a new viewpoint for historians of science and technology, as well as for the general reader. The historical narrative builds the story in a clear and logical fashion, roughly following chronological order.

History of Computing: Learning from the Past

History of Computing: Learning from the Past PDF Author: Arthur Tatnall
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642151981
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
History of Computing: Learning from the Past Why is the history of computing important? Given that the computer, as we now know it, came into existence less than 70 years ago it might seem a little odd to some people that we are concerned with its history. Isn’t history about ‘old things’? Computing, of course, goes back much further than 70 years with many earlier - vices rightly being known as computers, and their history is, of course, important. It is only the history of electronic digital computers that is relatively recent. History is often justified by use of a quote from George Santayana who famously said that: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. It is arguable whether there are particular mistakes in the history of computing that we should avoid in the future, but there is some circularity in this question, as the only way we will know the answer to this is to study our history. This book contains papers on a wide range of topics relating to the history of c- puting, written both by historians and also by those who were involved in creating this history. The papers are the result of an international conference on the History of Computing that was held as a part of the IFIP World Computer Congress in Brisbane in September 2010.