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 1 'JOO'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 Milestones in Analog and Digital Computing written by Herbert Bruderer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-04 with total page 2072 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Origins of Digital Computers written by Brian Randell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1973 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Makin Numbers written by I. Bernard Cohen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of technical essays and reminiscences is a companion to I. Bernard Cohen's biography Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. After an overview by Cohen, Part I presents the complete publication of Aiken's 1937 proposal for an automatic calculating machine, later realized as the Mark I, as well as recollections by the chief engineer in charge of construction of Mark II, Robert Campbell, and the programmer of Mark I, Richard Bloch. Henry Tropp describes Aiken's hostility to the exclusive use of binary numbers in computational systems and his alternative approach.
Download or read book Exploring the Early Digital written by Thomas Haigh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changes in the present challenge us to reinterpret the past, but historians have not yet come to grips with the convergence of computing, media, and communications technology. Today these things are inextricably intertwined, in technologies such as the smartphone and internet, in convergent industries, and in social practices. Yet they remain three distinct historical subfields, tilled by different groups of scholars using different tools. We often call this conglomeration “the digital,” recognizing its deep connection to the technology of digital computing. Unfortunately, interdisciplinary studies of digital practices, digital methods, or digital humanities have rarely been informed by deep engagement with the history of computing.Contributors to this volume have come together to reexamine an apparently familiar era in the history of computing through new lenses, exploring early digital computing and engineering practice as digital phenomena rather than as engines of mathematics and logic. Most focus on the period 1945 to 1960, the era in which the first electronic digital computers were created and the computer industry began to develop. Because digitality is first and foremost a way of reading objects and encoding information within them, we are foregrounding topics that have until now been viewed as peripheral in the history of computing: betting odds calculators, card file systems, program and data storage, programmable calculators, and digital circuit design practices. Reconceptualizing the “history of computing” as study of the “early digital” decenters the stored program computer, repositioning it as one of many digital technologies.
Download or read book A Science of Operations written by Mark Priestley and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-02-14 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Proceedings of the IRE written by and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Turing s Revolution written by Giovanni Sommaruga and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of the confluence of ideas in Turing’s era and work and examines the impact of his work on mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. It combines contributions by well-known scientists on the history and philosophy of computability theory as well as on generalised Turing computability. By looking at the roots and at the philosophical and technical influence of Turing’s work, it is possible to gather new perspectives and new research topics which might be considered as a continuation of Turing’s working ideas well into the 21st century.
Download or read book Alan Turing s Electronic Brain written by others and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mathematical genius Alan Turing, now well known for his crucial wartime role in breaking the ENIGMA code, was the first to conceive of the fundamental principle of the modern computer-the idea of controlling a computing machine's operations by means of a program of coded instructions, stored in the machine's 'memory'. In 1945 Turing drew up his revolutionary design for an electronic computing machine-his Automatic Computing Engine ('ACE'). A pilot model of the ACE ran its first program in 1950 and the production version, the 'DEUCE', went on to become a cornerstone of the fledgling British computer industry. The first 'personal' computer was based on Turing's ACE. Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine describes Turing's struggle to build the modern computer. The first detailed history of Turing's contributions to computer science, this text is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the computer and the history of mathematics. It contains first hand accounts by Turing and by the pioneers of computing who worked with him. As well as relating the story of the invention of the computer, the book clearly describes the hardware and software of the ACE-including the very first computer programs. The book is intended to be accessible to everyone with an interest in computing, and contains numerous diagrams and illustrations as well as original photographs. The book contains chapters describing Turing's path-breaking research in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (A-Life). The book has an extensive system of hyperlinks to The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, an on-line library of digital facsimiles of typewritten documents by Turing and the other scientists who pioneered the electronic computer.
Download or read book ENIAC in Action written by Thomas Haigh and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work explores the conception, design, construction, use, and afterlife of ENIAC, the first general purpose digital electronic computer.
Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries Third Series written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by Copyright Office, Library of Congress. This book was released on 1948 with total page 1186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes Part 1A: Books and Part 1B: Pamphlets, Serials and Contributions to Periodicals
Download or read book A New History of Modern Computing written by Thomas Haigh and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Scientific Medical and Technical Books Published in the United States of America written by Reginald Robert Hawkins and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Computer in the United States written by James W. Cortada and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Digital Flood written by James W. Cortada and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 810 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of how computers spread to over 20 nations globally in less than six decades, exploring economic, political, social and technological reasons and consequences. It is based on extensive research into primary and secondary sources, and concludes with a discussion of implications for key players in the globalized economy.
Download or read book Alan Turing s Electronic Brain written by B. Jack Copeland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rev. ed. of: Alan Turing's automatic computing engine / edited by B. Jack Copeland.
Download or read book A History of Scientific Computing written by Stephen Nash and published by Addison Wesley Publishing Company. This book was released on 1990 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays about pioneers in the field of scientific and numeric computing--John von Neumann, James Wilkinson, George Forsythe, and Howard Aiken--show how the drive to solve particular problems influenced the development of algorithms, software, and even computers. Methods that have led to new tools in computer analysis, such as the fast Fourier transform and finite-element and iterative methods, also are discussed, as well as the contributions of scientific organizations like ACM and SIAM and institutions like the Los Alamos Laboratory and the former National Bureau of Standards. The volume concludes with a view of numerical analysis in Europe and the Soviet Union. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
