Download or read book The Origins of Digital Computers written by B. Randell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My interest in the history of digital computers became an active one when I had the fortune to come across the almost entirely forgotten work of PERCY LUDGATE, who designed a mechanical program-controlled computer in Ireland in the early I ':ICC's. I undertook an investigation of his life and work, during which I began to realise that a large number of early developments, which we can now see as culminating in the modern digital computer, had been most undeservedly forgotten. Hopefully, historians of science, some of whom are now taking up the subject of the development of the computer and accumulating valuable data, particularly about the more recent events from the people concerned, will before too long provide us with comprehensive analytical accounts of the invention of the computer. The present book merely aims to bring together some of the more important and interesting written source material for such a history of computers. (Where necessary, papers have been translated into English, but every attempt has been made to retain the flavour of the original, and to avoid possibly misleading use of modern computing terminology.
Download or read book Networked Control Systems written by Alberto Bemporad and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-10-14 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book nds its origin in the WIDE PhD School on Networked Control Systems, which we organized in July 2009 in Siena, Italy. Having gathered experts on all the aspects of networked control systems, it was a small step to go from the summer school to the book, certainly given the enthusiasm of the lecturers at the school. We felt that a book collecting overviewson the important developmentsand open pr- lems in the eld of networked control systems could stimulate and support future research in this appealing area. Given the tremendouscurrentinterests in distributed control exploiting wired and wireless communication networks, the time seemed to be right for the book that lies now in front of you. The goal of the book is to set out the core techniques and tools that are ava- able for the modeling, analysis and design of networked control systems. Roughly speaking, the book consists of three parts. The rst part presents architectures for distributed control systems and models of wired and wireless communication n- works. In particular, in the rst chapter important technological and architectural aspects on distributed control systems are discussed. The second chapter provides insight in the behavior of communication channels in terms of delays, packet loss and information constraints leading to suitable modeling paradigms for commu- cation networks.
Download or read book Distinguished Figures in Mechanical Engineering in Spain and Ibero America written by Rafael López-García and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-06-24 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects contributions on leading figures in mechanism and machine science (MMS) from Spain and Ibero-America over the last two centuries. The contributions examine scientists whose work resulted in relevant technical-scientific achievements, with an impact on technology and science in the historical evolution of MMS fields, and with an influence on the development of society at large. Biographical notes describing the efforts and achievements of these persons are included as well, but a technical survey is the core of each chapter, offering a modern interpretation of their legacy.
Download or read book Bio Ceramics with Clinical Applications written by Maria Vallet-Regi and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication offers a unique approach that links the materials science of bioceramics to clinical needs and applications. Providing a structured account of this highly active area of research, the book reviews the clinical applications in bone tissue engineering, bone regeneration, joint replacement, drug-delivery systems and biomimetism, this book is an ideal resource for materials scientists and engineers, as well as for clinicians. From the contents: Part I Introduction 1. Bioceramics 2. Biomimetics Part II Materials 3. Calcium Phosphate Bioceramics 4. Silica-based Ceramics: Glasses 5. Silica-based Ceramics: Mesoporous Silica 6. Alumina, Zirconia, and Other Non-oxide Inert Bioceramics 7. Carbon-based Materials in Biomedicine Part III Material Shaping 8. Cements 9. Bioceramic Coatings for Medical Implants 10. Scaffold Designing Part IV Research on Future Ceramics 11. Bone Biology and Regeneration 12. Ceramics for Drug Delivery 13. Ceramics for Gene Transfection 14. Ceramic Nanoparticles for Cancer Treatment
Download or read book History of Computing in the Twentieth Century written by Nicholas Metropolis and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History of Computing in the Twentieth Century
Download or read book Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci written by L. E. Sigler and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Squares by Fibonacci is a gem in the mathematical literature and one of the most important mathematical treatises written in the Middle Ages. It is a collection of theorems on indeterminate analysis and equations of second degree which yield, among other results, a solution to a problem proposed by Master John of Palermo to Leonardo at the Court of Frederick II. The book was dedicated and presented to the Emperor at Pisa in 1225. Dating back to the 13th century the book exhibits the early and continued fascination of men with our number system and the relationship among numbers with special properties such as prime numbers, squares, and odd numbers. The faithful translation into modern English and the commentary by the translator make this book accessible to professional mathematicians and amateurs who have always been intrigued by the lure of our number system.
Download or read book Computing Before Computers written by William Aspray and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1990 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Spain a Global History written by Luis Francisco Martinez Montes and published by . This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Hispanic Monarchy was one of the largest and most diverse political communities known in history. At its apogee, it stretched from the Castilian plateau to the high peaks of the Andes; from the cosmopolitan cities of Seville, Naples, or Mexico City to Santa Fe and San Francisco; from Brussels to Buenos Aires and from Milan to Manila. During those centuries, Spain left its imprint across vast continents and distant oceans contributing in no minor way to the emergence of our globalised era. This was true not only in an economic sense-the Hispano-American silver peso transported across the Atlantic and the Pacific by the Spanish fleets was arguably the first global currency, thus facilitating the creation of a world economic system-but intellectually and artistically as well. The most extraordinary cultural exchanges took place in practically every corner of the Hispanic world, no matter how distant from the metropolis. At various times a descendant of the Aztec nobility was translating a Baroque play into Nahuatl to the delight of an Amerindian and mixed audience in the market of Tlatelolco; an Andalusian Dominican priest was writing the first Western grammar of the Chinese language in Fuzhou, a Chinese city that enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Spanish Philippines; a Franciscan friar was composing a piece of polyphonic music with lyrics in Quechua to be played in a church decorated with Moorish-style ceilings in a Peruvian valley; or a multi-ethnic team of Amerindian and Spanish naturalists was describing in Latin, Spanish and local vernacular languages thousands of medicinal plants, animals and minerals previously unknown to the West. And, most probably, at the same time that one of those exchanges were happening, the members of the School of Salamanca were laying the foundations of modern international law or formulating some of the first modern theories of price, value and money, Cervantes was writing Don Quixote, Velázquez was painting Las Meninas, or Goya was exposing both the dark and bright sides of the European Enlightenment. Actually, whenever we contemplate the galleries devoted to Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Murillo or Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid; when we visit the National Palace in Mexico City, a mission in California, a Jesuit church in Rome or the Intramuros quarter in Manila; or when we hear Spanish being spoken in a myriad of accents in the streets of San Francisco, New Orleans or Manhattan we are experiencing some of the past and present fruits of an always vibrant and still expanding cultural community. As the reader can infer by now, this book is about how Spain and the larger Hispanic world have contributed to world history and in particular to the history of civilisation, not only at the zenith of the Hispanic Monarchy but throughout a much longer span of time.
Download or read book Abel s Proof written by Peter Pesic and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-02-27 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual and human story of a mathematical proof that transformed our ideas about mathematics. In 1824 a young Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel proved conclusively that algebraic equations of the fifth order are not solvable in radicals. In this book Peter Pesic shows what an important event this was in the history of thought. He also presents it as a remarkable human story. Abel was twenty-one when he self-published his proof, and he died five years later, poor and depressed, just before the proof started to receive wide acclaim. Abel's attempts to reach out to the mathematical elite of the day had been spurned, and he was unable to find a position that would allow him to work in peace and marry his fiancé. But Pesic's story begins long before Abel and continues to the present day, for Abel's proof changed how we think about mathematics and its relation to the "real" world. Starting with the Greeks, who invented the idea of mathematical proof, Pesic shows how mathematics found its sources in the real world (the shapes of things, the accounting needs of merchants) and then reached beyond those sources toward something more universal. The Pythagoreans' attempts to deal with irrational numbers foreshadowed the slow emergence of abstract mathematics. Pesic focuses on the contested development of algebra—which even Newton resisted—and the gradual acceptance of the usefulness and perhaps even beauty of abstractions that seem to invoke realities with dimensions outside human experience. Pesic tells this story as a history of ideas, with mathematical details incorporated in boxes. The book also includes a new annotated translation of Abel's original proof.
Download or read book Beyond Human written by Maryanne L. Leone and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2023-10-02 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicling sixteenth-century Spain to the present day, Beyond Human aims to decentre the human and acknowledge the material historicity of more-than-human nature. The book explores key questions relating to ecological equity, justice, and responsibility within and beyond Spain in the Anthropocene. Examining relations between Iberian cultural practices, historical developments, and ecological processes, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, and the contributors to this volume reveal the structures that uphold and dismantle the non-human–human dichotomy and nature-culture divide. The book critiques works from the Golden Age to the twenty-first century in a wide range of genres, including comedia, royal treatises, agricultural reports, paintings, satirical essays, horror fiction and film, young adult and speculative literature, poetry, graphic novels, and television series. The authors contend that Spanish cultural studies must expose the material historicity that entangles today’s ecological crises and ecosocial injustices with previous, future, and contemporary entities. The book argues that this will require the simultaneous decentring of the human and of the Anthropocene as an ecocritical framework. By standardizing ecosocial analysis and widening avenues for ecopedagogical approaches, Beyond Human participates in the ecocentric transformation of Hispanic cultural studies.
Download or read book Self Portrait in Green written by Marie NDiaye and published by Influx Press. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'NDiaye is a hypnotic storyteller with an unflinching understanding of the rock-bottom reality of most people's life.' New York Times ' One of France's most exciting prose stylists.' The Guardian. Obsessed by her encounters with the mysterious green women, and haunted by the Garonne River, a nameless narrator seeks them out in La Roele, Paris, Marseille, and Ouagadougou. Each encounter reveals different aspects of the women; real or imagined, dead or alive, seductive or suicidal, driving the narrator deeper into her obsession, in this unsettling exploration of identity, memory and paranoia. Self Portrait in Green is the multi-prize winning, Marie NDiaye's brilliant subversion of the memoir. Written in diary entries, with lyrical prose and dreamlike imagery, we start with and return to the river, which mirrors the narrative by posing more questions than it answers.
Download or read book Kite Balloons to Airships written by and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Knowledge Stew written by Daniel Ganninger and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-05-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you ready to learn something new? The 2nd volume in the Knowledge Stew Guide series continues the quest to find the most interesting facts in the world. Take a journey through topics that range from science, history, and geography to food, entertainment, and business and learn the facts behind the facts. Discover things you might not have known about the moon, or why we're taller in the morning and shorter at night. Find out about a strange amusement park, a secret vault at Mt. Rushmore, or the world's most expensive coffee. These things, plus plenty more, are waiting for your brain to take them in. Just don't forget your spoon. For even more facts, check out Volume 1 of Knowledge Stew: The Guide to the Most Interesting Facts in the World.
Download or read book Abel s Proof written by Peter Pesic and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual and human story of a mathematical proof that transformed our ideas about mathematics. In 1824 a young Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel proved conclusively that algebraic equations of the fifth order are not solvable in radicals. In this book Peter Pesic shows what an important event this was in the history of thought. He also presents it as a remarkable human story. Abel was twenty-one when he self-published his proof, and he died five years later, poor and depressed, just before the proof started to receive wide acclaim. Abel's attempts to reach out to the mathematical elite of the day had been spurned, and he was unable to find a position that would allow him to work in peace and marry his fiancé. But Pesic's story begins long before Abel and continues to the present day, for Abel's proof changed how we think about mathematics and its relation to the "real" world. Starting with the Greeks, who invented the idea of mathematical proof, Pesic shows how mathematics found its sources in the real world (the shapes of things, the accounting needs of merchants) and then reached beyond those sources toward something more universal. The Pythagoreans' attempts to deal with irrational numbers foreshadowed the slow emergence of abstract mathematics. Pesic focuses on the contested development of algebra—which even Newton resisted—and the gradual acceptance of the usefulness and perhaps even beauty of abstractions that seem to invoke realities with dimensions outside human experience. Pesic tells this story as a history of ideas, with mathematical details incorporated in boxes. The book also includes a new annotated translation of Abel's original proof.
Download or read book The Origins of Digital Computers written by B. Randell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-21 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Productivity Machines written by Corinna Schlombs and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How productivity culture and technology became emblematic of the American economic system in pre- and postwar Germany. The concept of productivity originated in a statistical measure of output per worker or per work-hour, calculated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. A broader productivity culture emerged in 1920s America, as Henry Ford and others linked methods of mass production and consumption to high wages and low prices. These ideas were studied eagerly by a Germany in search of economic recovery after World War I, and, decades later, the Marshall Plan promoted productivity in its efforts to help post–World War II Europe rebuild. In Productivity Machines, Corinna Schlombs examines the transatlantic history of productivity technology and culture in the two decades before and after World War II. She argues for the interpretive flexibility of productivity: different groups viewed productivity differently at different times. Although it began as an objective measure, productivity came to be emblematic of the American economic system; post-World War II West Germany, however, adapted these ideas to its own political and economic values. Schlombs explains that West German unionists cast a doubtful eye on productivity's embrace of plant-level collective bargaining; unions fought for codetermination—the right to participate in corporate decisions. After describing German responses to US productivity, Schlombs offers an in-depth look at labor relations in one American company in Germany—that icon of corporate America, IBM. Finally, Schlombs considers the emergence of computer technology—seen by some as a new symbol of productivity but by others as the means to automate workers out of their jobs.
Download or read book Twisty Little Passages written by Nick Montfort and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-02-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical approach to interactive fiction, as literature and game. Interactive fiction—the best-known form of which is the text game or text adventure—has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages (the title refers to a maze in Adventure, the first interactive fiction) is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, an interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it. Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors (including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragons), and follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the 1990s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little Passages, Nick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration.