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John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., and their team built ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) in 1946, the first modern stored-program electronic computer. They built it primarily to design weapons during the Second World War. Since then, computers have entered every facet of our daily life. Nowadays, we use computers extensively to process data in banks, government offices, and commercial establishments. We use them to book train tickets, airline tickets, and hotel rooms. They control systems such as satellites and moon landers in real-time. They create complex graphics and animation. They synthesize speech and music. They write essays and draw pictures. They control Robots. Publishers use them as tools. They are used to play video games. Many devices, such as audio and video tape recorders and film cameras, have died and been replaced by digital devices. They have eliminated many jobs, such as type-setters, and created new jobs, such as programmers, requiring better skills. It is fascinating to trace this history. This book recounts the history of modern computing as a sequence of seventy-two anecdotes, beginning with how engineers at the University of Pennsylvania built the modern stored program computer ENIAC in 1946 and ends with the story of the evolution of ChatGPT and Gemini, the generative large language model neural network released between 2022 and 2024 that give natural language answers to natural language questions, write essays, compose poems, and write computer programs. The anecdotes in this book are short. Each anecdote is between 1500 and 2500 words and recounts the story of an important invention in the evolution of modern computing and the people who innovated. There are seventy-two anecdotes in this book. The anecdotes cover the history of computer hardware, software, applications, computer communications, and artificial intelligence. The set of anecdotes on hardware systems describes, among others, the history of the evolution of computers, such as the IBM 701, CDC 6600, IBM 360 family, Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series, Apple – the early personal computer, and Atlas – a pioneering British computer, IBM PC, Connection Machine, Cray series supercomputers, computing cluster Beowulf, IBM Roadrunner – the fastest and the most expensive ($ 600 million) computer in the World in 2022, Raspberry Pi – the cheapest ($35) computer. The group of anecdotes on software describes the evolution of Fortran, COBOL, BASIC, Compatible Time-shared systems, Unix, CP/M OS, MS-DOS, Project MAC, and open-source software movement, among others. Some anecdotes are on computer applications, such as Data Base Management Systems (DBMS), spreadsheets, cryptography, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The anecdotes on computer communications recount the evolution of computer communication networks, such as ALOHAnet, Ethernet, ARPANET, and the Internet, among others. The anecdotes on Artificial Intelligence (AI) start with "Who coined the word Artificial Intelligence?" and recounts early chess-playing programs, the evolution of neural networks, Expert Systems, and the history of chatbots and Robots. These anecdotes are similar to a short story collection. A reader may read them in any order. Each anecdote is self-contained, and readers may read the one that interests them. The language used in the book is simple, with no jargon. Anyone with a high school education can understand the material in this book. KEY FEATURES • The book recounts the history of modern computing as a series of 72 anecdotes • Each anecdote tells the story of an important event in the history of computing • Each anecdote describes an invention and those who invented • Each anecdote is self-contained and may be read in any order • Suitable for a general reader with a high school education TARGET AUDIENCE • Students Pursuing Computer Science & IT Courses • IT Professionals • 10+2 students
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.
Account of the birth of the modern computer from 1930-1960.
Computer: A History of the Information Machine traces the history of the computer and shows how business and government were the first to explore its unlimited, information-processing potential. Old-fashioned entrepreneurship combined with scientific know-how inspired now famous computer engineers to create the technology that became IBM. Wartime needs drove the giant ENIAC, the first fully electronic computer. Later, the PC enabled modes of computing that liberated people from room-sized, mainframe computers. This third edition provides updated analysis on software and computer networking, including new material on the programming profession, social networking, and mobile computing. It expands its focus on the IT industry with fresh discussion on the rise of Google and Facebook as well as how powerful applications are changing the way we work, consume, learn, and socialize. Computer is an insightful look at the pace of technological advancement and the seamless way computers are integrated into the modern world. Through comprehensive history and accessible writing, Computer is perfect for courses on computer history, technology history, and information and society, as well as a range of courses in the fields of computer science, communications, sociology, and management.
Today it seems that computers occupy every single space in life. This book traces the evolution of computers from the humble beginnings as simple calculators up to the modern day jack-of-all trades devices like the iPhone. Readers will learn about how computers evolved from humongous military-issue refrigerators to the spiffy, delicate, and intriguing devices that many modern people feel they can't live without anymore. Readers will also discover the historical significance of computers, and their pivotal roles in World War II, the Space Race, and the emergence of modern Western powers.
Documents the innovations of a group of eccentric geniuses who developed computer code in the mid-20th century as part of mathematician Alan Turin's theoretical universal machine idea, exploring how their ideas led to such developments as digital television, modern genetics and the hydrogen bomb.
This exciting and accessible book takes us on a journey from the early days of computers to the cutting-edge research of the present day that will shape computing in the coming decades. It introduces a fascinating cast of dreamers and inventors who brought these great technological developments into every corner of the modern world, and will open up the universe of computing to anyone who has ever wondered where his or her smartphone came from.
Discover a fascinating look into the lives of six historic trailblazers in this World War II-era story of the American women who programmed the world's first modern computer. After the end of World War II, the race for technological supremacy sped on. Top-secret research into ballistics and computing, begun during the war to aid those on the front lines, continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer—better known as the ENIAC—even though there were no instruction codes or programming languages in existence. While most students of computer history are aware of this innovative machine, the great contributions of the women who programmed it were never told—until now. Over the course of a decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of the original six ENIAC Programmers and recorded extensive interviews with the women about their work. Proving Ground restores these women to their rightful place as technological revolutionaries. As the tech world continues to struggle with gender imbalance and its far-reaching consequences, the story of the ENIAC Programmers' groundbreaking work is more urgently necessary than ever before, and Proving Ground is the celebration they deserve.
Tracy Kidder's "riveting" (Washington Post) story of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech industry. Computers have changed since 1981, when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations. The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the twentieth century. "Fascinating...A surprisingly gripping account of people at work." --Wall Street Journal
History of Computing: Learning from the Past Why is the history of computing important? Given that the computer, as we now know it, came into existence less than 70 years ago it might seem a little odd to some people that we are concerned with its history. Isn’t history about ‘old things’? Computing, of course, goes back much further than 70 years with many earlier - vices rightly being known as computers, and their history is, of course, important. It is only the history of electronic digital computers that is relatively recent. History is often justified by use of a quote from George Santayana who famously said that: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. It is arguable whether there are particular mistakes in the history of computing that we should avoid in the future, but there is some circularity in this question, as the only way we will know the answer to this is to study our history. This book contains papers on a wide range of topics relating to the history of c- puting, written both by historians and also by those who were involved in creating this history. The papers are the result of an international conference on the History of Computing that was held as a part of the IFIP World Computer Congress in Brisbane in September 2010.