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Author: Maurice Vincent Wilkes
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Maurice Wilkes was one of the leading scientific explorers in the development of the modern digital computer. He directed the Mathematical Laboratory (later named the Computer Laboratory) at Cambridge University, where he and his team built the EDSAC, the first stored program digital computer to go into service. Wilkes describes in nontechnical detail the growth of EDSAC and its successor, EDSAC 2, his introduction of microprogramming, and the first experiments with time-sharing systems. In the 1950s, when machines were still getting larger rather than smaller, Wilkes was one of the few who foresaw a time when nonspecialists would be using computers almost universally, and he reviews his anticipatory efforts to develop simple programming systems. But his book is more than a history of computing, it also recounts the allied scientific effort when he was one of those scientists and engineers ("boffins" as they were called by the RAF) who were in the thick of it, his electronics skills enlisted in the new and exciting development of radar. In this absorbing autobiography, Wilkes is as concerned with people and places as he is with computer components and programs of development. He deftly sketches his childhood in the English midlands and his student days at Cambridge where he studied mathematical physics, and his boyhood fascination with radio matured. He conveys the excitement of sudden insights and long-sought breakthroughs against life's simpler pleasures and trials. His account brims with assessments and anecdotes of such contemporaries as Turing, Hartree, von Neumann, Aiken, and a dozen others. And with his impressions of America and Germany formed during his scientific journeys.
Author: Maurice Vincent Wilkes
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Maurice Wilkes was one of the leading scientific explorers in the development of the modern digital computer. He directed the Mathematical Laboratory (later named the Computer Laboratory) at Cambridge University, where he and his team built the EDSAC, the first stored program digital computer to go into service. Wilkes describes in nontechnical detail the growth of EDSAC and its successor, EDSAC 2, his introduction of microprogramming, and the first experiments with time-sharing systems. In the 1950s, when machines were still getting larger rather than smaller, Wilkes was one of the few who foresaw a time when nonspecialists would be using computers almost universally, and he reviews his anticipatory efforts to develop simple programming systems. But his book is more than a history of computing, it also recounts the allied scientific effort when he was one of those scientists and engineers ("boffins" as they were called by the RAF) who were in the thick of it, his electronics skills enlisted in the new and exciting development of radar. In this absorbing autobiography, Wilkes is as concerned with people and places as he is with computer components and programs of development. He deftly sketches his childhood in the English midlands and his student days at Cambridge where he studied mathematical physics, and his boyhood fascination with radio matured. He conveys the excitement of sudden insights and long-sought breakthroughs against life's simpler pleasures and trials. His account brims with assessments and anecdotes of such contemporaries as Turing, Hartree, von Neumann, Aiken, and a dozen others. And with his impressions of America and Germany formed during his scientific journeys.
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: John A. N. Lee
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9781884964473
Category : Computer programmers
Languages : en
Pages : 1250
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Book Description
First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Author: Harlan E. Anderson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615305455
Category : Computer engineers
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
The autobiography of Harlan E. Anderson, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), includes an appendix "The Rise and Fall of a Computer Empire" chronicling DEC's amazing growth and decline during the period after Anderson resigned and many photos which have never been seen before. Anderson writes on learning about computers and writing programs when the first stored program computers were still under construction. He writes about his earning days which were closely tied to the co-founding of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1957. For the first time, Anderson discusses his close relationship with co-founder Ken Olsen and how it came apart during the first decade of DEC's existence. Anderson also writes about his returning days which are still going on through his contributions to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and many other organizations.--harlaneanderson.com/
Author: Martin Campbell-Kelly
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000878759
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375
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Book Description
This volume provides a history of the computer which now comes properly up to the ubiquitous age, with new chapters that look at globalization, platformitization and regulation, allowing readers to engage with the more recent takeover by computers in their historical perspective. With the growing ubiquity of computers, the subject is one of interest to many students and this will feature in history of science and technology courses, and world history courses as well as ones specifically on computing. Books on the history of computing tend to be quite technically or business focused, this covers the social and cultural history as well.
Author: John L. Hennessy
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080502520
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 1133
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Book Description
This best-selling title, considered for over a decade to be essential reading for every serious student and practitioner of computer design, has been updated throughout to address the most important trends facing computer designers today. In this edition, the authors bring their trademark method of quantitative analysis not only to high performance desktop machine design, but also to the design of embedded and server systems. They have illustrated their principles with designs from all three of these domains, including examples from consumer electronics, multimedia and web technologies, and high performance computing. The book retains its highly rated features: Fallacies and Pitfalls, which share the hard-won lessons of real designers; Historical Perspectives, which provide a deeper look at computer design history; Putting it all Together, which present a design example that illustrates the principles of the chapter; Worked Examples, which challenge the reader to apply the concepts, theories and methods in smaller scale problems; and Cross-Cutting Issues, which show how the ideas covered in one chapter interact with those presented in others. In addition, a new feature, Another View, presents brief design examples in one of the three domains other than the one chosen for Putting It All Together. The authors present a new organization of the material as well, reducing the overlap with their other text, Computer Organization and Design: A Hardware/Software Approach 2/e, and offering more in-depth treatment of advanced topics in multithreading, instruction level parallelism, VLIW architectures, memory hierarchies, storage devices and network technologies. Also new to this edition, is the adoption of the MIPS 64 as the instruction set architecture. In addition to several online appendixes, two new appendixes will be printed in the book: one contains a complete review of the basic concepts of pipelining, the other provides solutions a selection of the exercises. Both will be invaluable to the student or professional learning on her own or in the classroom. Hennessy and Patterson continue to focus on fundamental techniques for designing real machines and for maximizing their cost/performance. * Presents state-of-the-art design examples including: * IA-64 architecture and its first implementation, the Itanium * Pipeline designs for Pentium III and Pentium IV * The cluster that runs the Google search engine * EMC storage systems and their performance * Sony Playstation 2 * Infiniband, a new storage area and system area network * SunFire 6800 multiprocessor server and its processor the UltraSPARC III * Trimedia TM32 media processor and the Transmeta Crusoe processor * Examines quantitative performance analysis in the commercial server market and the embedded market, as well as the traditional desktop market. Updates all the examples and figures with the most recent benchmarks, such as SPEC 2000. * Expands coverage of instruction sets to include descriptions of digital signal processors, media processors, and multimedia extensions to desktop processors. * Analyzes capacity, cost, and performance of disks over two decades. Surveys the role of clusters in scientific computing and commercial computing. * Presents a survey, taxonomy, and the benchmarks of errors and failures in computer systems. * Presents detailed descriptions of the design of storage systems and of clusters. * Surveys memory hierarchies in modern microprocessors and the key parameters of modern disks. * Presents a glossary of networking terms.
Author: Kenneth Flamm
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815707219
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
The development of the first electronic digital computers in the 1940s signaled the beginning of a new and distinctive type of industry—an industry marked by competition through innovation, and by the large percentage of revenues spent on research and development. Written as a companion volume to Targeting the Computer: Government Support and International Competition, this comprehensive volume provides a new understanding to the complex forces that have shaped the computer industry during the past four decades. Kenneth Flamm identifies the origins of technologies important to the creation of computers and traces the roots of individual technologies to the specific research groups and programs responsible for major advances. He evaluates the impact of these innovations on industrial competition and argues that the emergence of specialization and product differentiation in the 1950s and the compatibility and standards in the mid-1960s were key factors defining this competition. Flamm also identifies the various market strategies adopted in later decades to challenge an industry leader, strategies linked to the entry and exit of individual firms. In addition to the effects of technology and internal industry developments, international competition and national policies on technology, trade, and investment shaped the evolution of this new industry. Flamm documents the role of government support for technology in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan and describes the critical technological and economic links between national and international markets. Finally, he links these strategies, technological trends, and national policies to one another and shows how they continue to influence current developments in the computer industry.
Author: Martin Campbell-Kelly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429973640
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
This book covers the way computing was handled before the arrival of electronic computers. It discusses manual information processing and early technologies. The book describes the development of software technology, the professionalization of programming, and the emergence of a software industry.
Author: Eric G. Swedin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440866058
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
This book, aimed at general readers, covers the entirety of computing history from antiquity to the present, placing the story of computing into the broader context of politics, economics, society, and more. Computers dominate the world we live in, and this book describes how we got here. The Computer: A Brief History of the Machine That Changed the World covers topics from early efforts at mathematical computation back in ancient times, such as the abacus and the Antikythera device, through Babbage's Difference Engine and the Hollerith Tabulating Machines of the 19th century, to the eventual invention of the modern computer during World War II and its aftermath. The scope of the text reaches into the modern day, with chapters on social media and the influence of computers and technology on recent elections. The information in this book, perfect for readers new to the topic or those looking to delve into the history of computers in greater detail, can be accessed both chronologically and topically. With chapters focusing on larger time periods as well as shorter subsections covering specific people and topics, this book is designed to make the history of computing as approachable as possible.
Author: James W. Cortada
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315287757
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 181
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Book Description
This book studies how a technological innovation -- in this case the computer -- progresses from its origin as an idea in someone's mind to its eventual manifestation as a useable and marketable consumer product.
