Faster Than Thought. A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines.

BOWDEN, B. V. (ed.).

Published by London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, 1953

About this Item

First edition, in the dust jacket, of "the most widely read early English introduction to electronic computing" (Origins of Cyberspace), a collection of 24 essays by leading experts in the field, including a chapter on computer chess that was one of Alan Turing's final published pieces. From 1950 to 1953 Bertram Vivian Bowden (1910-1989) worked for the Ferranti corporation, a computer company that specialised in machines for defence and electrical systems and which introduced the first commercially available computer, the Ferranti Mark I, in 1951. Bowden "was particularly effective in explaining, with uncanny prescience, the dramatic effect that the digital computer was destined to have" (ODNB). In the preface he describes some of the tasks, such as engineering calculations, that computers will soon take over from humans, and writes, "It seems probable that we shall have a second Industrial Revolution on our hands before long… In the next revolution machines may replace mens' brains and relieve them of much of the drudgery and boredom which is now the lot of so many white collar workers". Origins of Cyberspace 504. Octavo. Photographic frontispiece of Ada Lovelace, 13 plates, 2 folding tables, diagrams within text. Original cream cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Ownership initials on front free endpaper. Spine lightly sunned, handful of marks to cloth and edges, contents clean; jacket price-clipped, spine toned and soiled, rear flap fold rubbed, a few chips and closed tears to edges, scuff to front panel: a very good copy in like jacket.

Seller Inventory # 188231

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Faster Than Thought. A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines.
• Publisher: London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, 1953
• Edition: 1st Edition