Computers - History

The crypto wars have raged for half a century. In the 1970s, digital privacy activists prophesied the emergence of an Orwellian State, made possible by computer-mediated mass surveillance. The antidote: digital encryption. The U.S. government warned encryption would not only prevent surveillance of law-abiding...

First published in 1982, William Tang's Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner is generally considered to be the best introduction to 8-bit machine code programming ever written. With many great game writers crediting this as the book that got them started, there still...

Introduction.- "Doing" Mathematics: A Toolkit for Mathematical Reasoning.- Sets and Their Algebras: The Stem Cells of Mathematics.- Numbers I: The Basics of Our Number System.- Arithmetic: Putting Numbers to Work.- Summations: Complex Operations from Simple Components.- The Vertigo of Infinity: Handling the Very Large...

A historical study of Chile's twin experiments with cybernetics and socialism, and what they tell us about the relationship of technology and politics.In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The first was Chile's...

First published in 1985, the Amstrad Games Book helped owners of the CPC464 and CPC664 home computers to learn more about their machines, including how to program a range of games. For many readers, their Amstrad would be the first computer they would ever...

"Exposes the vast gap between the actual science underlying AI and the dramatic claims being made for it."--John Horgan "If you want to know about AI, read this book...It shows how a supposedly futuristic reverence for Artificial Intelligence retards progress when it denigrates our...

Around the world, millions of people hijack cars in Grand Theft Auto, role play fantastical heroes in World of WarCraft, and crush candy on phones as small as wallets yet nearly as powerful as desktop computers. But long before video games became a multi-billion-dollar...

You don't have to understand how to edit Wikipedia in order to find the information you need and join the conversation. This booklet gives you just what you need to know in friendly, concise form so you can research any subject without getting lost...

An exhilarating, elegant memoir and a significant polemic on how computers and algorithms shape our understanding of the world and of who we are Bitwise is a wondrous ode to the computer lan­guages and codes that captured technologist David Auerbach's imagination. With a philoso­pher's...

This is the story of how a handful of geeks and mavericks dragged the computer out of corporate back rooms and laboratories and into our living rooms and offices. It is a tale not only of extraordinary innovation and vision but also of cunning...

The nonfiction debut from the author of the international bestseller "Sacred Games" about the surprising overlap between writing and computer codingVikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary new book, his first...

Way back in the last century, back in the 1960s, computers were mammoth mysterious machines. They were immensely expensive yet became essential to daily business operations. Yet, no one ever saw them. Security dictated they be hidden away. Only the computer operators were allowed...

Since its debut in 1994 as the first comprehensive book about videogame history, Phoenix has been regarded worldwide as the Bible of videogame history by professionals and fans alike. Now in its fourth edition, the text has been completely rewritten and updated to include...

The ThinkPad notebook computer has been at the center of the digital revolution that has transformed millions of lives around the world, allowing users to obtain access to their documents, pictures and other personal data from virtually anywhere at any time. More than 100...

This book explores the history of hypertext, an influential concept that forms the underlying structure of the World Wide Web and innumerable software applications. Barnet combines an analysis of contemporary literature with her exclusive interviews with those at the forefront of the hypertext innovation....

Contrary to what many believe, Alan Turing is not the father of the all-purpose computer. Engineers were, independently of Turing, already building such machines during World War II. Turing's influence was felt more in programming after his death than in computer building during his...

Created in 1946 as part of a 1,000 page Report on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), this ENIAC Operating Manual provides a fascinating glimpse into the technology behind the world's first electronic, general-purpose computer. Designed and built during WWII at the University...

Electronic Value Exchange examines in detail the transformation of the VISA electronic payment system from a collection of non-integrated, localized, paper-based bank credit card programs into the cooperative, global, electronic value exchange network it is today. Topics and features: provides a history of the...

We live in a moment of high anxiety around digital transformation. Computers are blamed for generating toxic forms of culture and ways of life. Once part of future imaginaries that were optimistic or even utopian, today there is a sense that things have turned...

'In a short life he accomplished much, and to the roll of great names in the history of his particular studies added his own.' So is described one of the greatest figures of the twentieth century, yet Alan Turing's name was not widely recognised...

This book tells the unlikely story of a shy farm boy who hated school but ended up working more than 25 years for one of the world's most successful companies of the 20th century. It is a candid collection of recollections, more than 25...

This book takes the reader through the design and implementation of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum's custom chip, revealing for the first time the decisions behind its design and its hidden secrets. By using it as case study, the techniques required to design an 8-bit...

Momentous developments in the global economy over the last two decades have dramatically increased the availability of industrial investment sites and lowered the cost of relocating core activities to new countries. But how should these developments be exploited for competitive advantage? Firms face competing...

Today, we associate the relationship between feedback, control, and computing with Norbert Wiener's 1948 formulation of cybernetics. But the theoretical and practical foundations for cybernetics, control engineering, and digital computing were laid earlier, between the two world wars. In Between Human and Machine: Feedback,...

Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse details the remarkable uses for quantum computing in code breaking, for quantum computers will be able to crack many of the leading methods of protecting secret information, while offering new unbreakable codes. Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse is a...

Ob Sie ihn nun lieben oder hassen - Bill Gates hat ganz allein die technologische Zukunft des 21. Jahrhunderts gepr臠t. "Bill Gates Speaks" dokumentiert Leben und Ambitionen einer weltweit einzigartigen F?rungsperlichkeit, und zwar sowohl aus unternehmensbezogener als auch aus kultureller Sicht. Dies ist das...

Today's digital culture traces its roots to the 1980s, when the first computer generation came of age. These original techno-kids grew up with home-brew programs, secret computer access codes, and arcades where dedicated video gamers fought to extend their play by earning "extra life."...

When John Mauchly and Presper Eckert developed the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II, their intention was to aid artillerymen in aiming their guns. Since then, in the past fifty years, ENIAC and its offspring...

The 15 scientists whose work is profiled in the book have each made significant contributions to a part of the creation of modern computer science. Some are well-known: Donald Knuth, Alan Kay, Danny Hillis; others are not, although all of their contributions have been...

Who Are The Cypherpunks? This is the unauthorized telling of the revolutionary cryptography story behind the motion picture The Fifth Estate in theatres this October, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, a documentary out now. WikiLeaks brought to light a new form...

First published in 1984, this user-friendly guide to the Commodore 64 helped many owners of the much-loved home computer understand their machine to a whole new level. The details within the book enabled users to take their first steps in programming machine code even...

The fascinating inside story of how the Android operating system came to be. In 2004, Android was two people who wanted to build camera software but couldn't get investors interested. Today, Android is a large team at Google, delivering an operating system (including camera...

Mechanology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the study of machines and can be described as a protologism for a social science discipline concerned with the analysis and classification of technological artifacts. In general, Mechanology recognizes the four distinct types of machine...

Automating Linguistics offers an in-depth study of the history of the mathematisation and automation of the sciences of language. In the wake of the first mathematisation of the 1930s, two waves followed: machine translation in the 1950s and the development of computational linguistics and...

When viewed through a political lens, the act of defining terms in natural language arguably transforms knowledge into values. This unique volume explores how corporate, military, academic, and professional values shaped efforts to define computer terminology and establish an information engineering profession as a...

The ZX80 home computer was launched in 1980 by the then still-to-be-knighted home computer mogul Clive Sinclair. Available in kit form at 79.99 for the aspiring hobbyist or pre-built at a price of 99.99 the ground-breaking machine offered home computing for the kind of...

The SAM Coupé was an 8-bit British home computer first released in late 1989. Designed to offer backwards compatibility with the ZX Spectrum, it was marketed as a logical upgrade for owners of the much-loved range of Sinclair machines. Originally manufactured by Miles Gordon...

The crypto wars have raged for half a century. In the 1970s, digital privacy activists prophesied the emergence of an Orwellian State, made possible by computer-mediated mass surveillance. The antidote: digital encryption. The U.S. government warned encryption would not only prevent surveillance of law-abiding...

Code Nation explores the rise of software development as a social, cultural, and technical phenomenon in American history. The movement germinated in government and university labs during the 1950s, gained momentum through corporate and counterculture experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, and became a...

Despite widespread consensus that China's digital revolution was sure to bring about massive democratic reforms, such changes have not come to pass. While scholars and policy makers alternate between predicting change and disparaging a stubbornly authoritarian regime, in this book Shaohua Guo demonstrates how...

Donald E. Knuth lived two separate lives in the late 1950s. During daylight he ran down the visible and respectable lane of mathematics. During nighttime, he trod the unpaved road of computer programming and compiler writing. Both roads intersected -- as Knuth discovered while...

This organizational history relates the role of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the development of modern computing. Drawing upon new and existing oral histories, extensive use of NSF documents, and the experience of two of the authors as senior managers, this book describes...

This book addresses the application of computing to cultural heritage and the discipline of Digital Humanities that formed around it. Digital Humanities research is transforming how the Human record can be transmitted, shaped, understood, questioned and imagined and it has been ongoing for more...

Ada's Legacy illustrates the depth and diversity of writers, thinkers, and makers who have been inspired by Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician and writer. The volume, which commemorates the bicentennial of Ada's birth in December 1815, celebrates Lovelace's many achievements as well as the...

OpenStreetMap is the free and open wiki map of the world made by millions of volunteers who re just like you. Contributors use paper, pens, GPS devices, phones and laptops to capture the world around them (like a street name and location) and then...

The first of its kind, Journey to the Moon details the history and design of the computer that enabled U.S. astronauts to land on the moon. The book recalls the history of computer technology, both hardware and software, and the applications of digital computing...

Launched at the peak of the legendary 1980s microcomputer rivalry, the Jupiter ACE was the most intriguing machine of them all, marketed by Jupiter Cantab. This company was founded by Richard Altwasser and Stephen Vickers - the key hardware and software designers for the...

This volume is the last of four volumes. Volume I describes the history and construction of BASIC; Volume II describes the computerisation of non-parametric statistical tests and some other statistical measures in BASIC and Volume III describes the programming of matrices and polynomials in...

Since the first computer games became available, sex has played a role in some form. But with the release of games like Playboy(R) The Mansion(TM), Leisure Suit Larry(TM) and The Singles, sexual content has gained a firm foothold and, for the first time, ventured...

The Web has been with us now for almost 25 years. An integral part of our social, cultural and political lives, 'new media' is simply not that new anymore. Despite the rapidly expanding archives of information at our disposal, and the recent growth of...