A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age, New Edition - Softcover

Eames, Charles; Eames, Ray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674156269 ISBN 13: 9780674156265

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1990

Synopsis

A Computer Perspective is an illustrated essay on the origins and first lines of development of the computer. The complex network of creative forces and social pressures that have produced the computer is personified here in the creators of instruments of computation, and their machines or tables; the inventors of mathematical or logical concepts and their applications; and the fabricators of practical devices to serve the immediate needs of government, commerce, engineering, and science.

The book is based on an exhibition conceived and assembled for International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation. Like the exhibition, it is not a history in the narrow sense of a chronology of concepts and devices. Yet these pages actually display more true history (in relation to the computer) than many more conventional presentations of the development of science and technology.

About this title

About the Author

I. Bernard Cohen was Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University, and one of the founders of the modern study of the history of science.

Review

“A Computer Perspective is the first truly graphic history of the origin and development of the computer... This book will long remain a unique anthology of the great events that occur when dreamers and theorists can get together with engineers and inventors.”―The Economist

“A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age sets out to...[place] the digital computer in its historical context, taking 1950 as its terminal date. By then, the digital computer revolution had been fully inaugurated with the first generation of modern stored-program computers. The book casts a wide net as it presents, mainly with pictures and captions, the many contributory ideas and developments that provide the foundation and background for the computer age... This is a book full of interesting pictures and quotations. It brings out the technical, human and social aspects of the development of computers in an imaginative way. Who could resist a book containing such fascinating information?”―Antony Anderson, New Scientist

“[This] book set a standard for the history of computing.”―P. E. Ceruzzi, Computing Reviews

“The volume is a must for everyone interested in computer history and an important tool for anyone wanting to understand how the computer age started.”―Heinz Zemanek, Science of Computer Programming

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0674156269
• ISBN 13: 9780674156265
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 176
• Editor: Fleck Glen