Computers - History

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,...

First published in 1985, this user-friendly guide to coding machine language on the Atari 130XE helped many owners of the much-loved home computer achieve programming feats well beyond the limits of BASIC. Based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU running at 1.79 MHz, the...

The material in this book presents an introduction to the Indian contributions to the science of computing. The book starts with an overview of Indian science. The next three chapters deal with the description of binary numbers, the Katapayadi notation and its equivalence to...

Electronic computers are arguably the greatest invention of the 20th century. They are the enablers for many of the technologies that the developed world now relies upon and their impact on society cannot be overestimated. The story of their creation is a fascinating one...

The Paper Computer Unfolded reveals the untold true story of three fully programmable computers that were made of nothing more than paper, cardboard, a bit of glue, and a lot of imagination. From transistors to lasers, from radio astronomy to the solar battery cell,...

Classic papers by thinkers ranging from from Aristotle and Leibniz to Norbert Wiener and Gordon Moore that chart the evolution of computer science. Ideas That Created the Future collects forty-six classic papers in computer science that map the evolution of the field. It covers...

This smart, "riveting" (Los Angeles Times) history of the Internet free culture movement and its larger effects on society--and the life and shocking suicide of Aaron Swartz, a founding developer of Reddit and Creative Commons--written by Slate correspondent Justin Peters "captures Swartz flawlessly" (The...

"This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it...

The Vintage Commodore 128 Personal Computer Handbook is written in easy to understand, non-technical language, to help answer your questions about the C-128. Aimed specifically at present day users, this book will teach you how to use and equip your vintage C-128, even if...

Concluding the Commodore trilogy, this book takes a look at Commodore's resurgence in the late 1980's and then ultimate demise. This was a period of immense creativity from engineers within the company, who began "moonshot" projects using emerging CD-ROM technology. Get to know the...

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...

First published in 1983, this easy-to-follow guide to using machine language on the Dragon 32 gave users an excellent insight into the acclaimed machine that many considered well ahead of its time. Though it was more powerful and quicker than many of its competitors,...

Since its debut in 1994 as the first serious 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 of this deluxe hardcover volume has been completely...

The first time that Apple, Google and Microsoft found themselves sharing the same digital space was 1998. They were radically different companies and they would subsequently fight a series of pitched battles for control of different parts of the digital landscape. They could not...

The computer science problem whose solution could transform life as we know it The P-NP problem is the most important open problem in computer science, if not all of mathematics. Simply stated, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly checked by...

Charles Babbage (1792-1871) articulated the principles behind modern computing machines. This compilation of his writings, plus those of several of his contemporaries, illuminates the early history of the calculator.Author: Charles BabbageISBN-10: 0486246914ISBN-13: 9780486246918Publisher: Dover PublicationsLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/21/2012Pages: 450Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.00lbsSize: 8.40h x 5.30w x...

"A fascinating compendium of information about writing systems-both for words and numbers." -Publishers Weekly "A truly enlightening and fascinating study for the mathematically oriented reader." -Booklist "Well researched. . . . This book is a rich resource for those involved in researching the history...

Author: Douglas K. SmithISBN-10: 1583482660ISBN-13: 9781583482667Publisher: iUniverseLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/01/1999Pages: 276Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.03lbsSize: 9.05h x 6.04w x 0.74d

Contemporary life is deeply reliant on digital technology, and computers have come to dominate nearly every aspect of our culture. What is the philosophical and spiritual significance of this dependence on electronic technology for our relationship to nature and for the future of humanity?...

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...

First published in 1984, this book enabled a whole new generation to learn game coding on their Commodore 16 - an unusual and relatively rare machine that had a processor which was faster than that of the famous C64, possessed more efficient screen memory,...

Bootstrapping analyzes the genesis of personal computing from both technological and social perspectives, through a close study of the pathbreaking work of one researcher, Douglas Engelbart. In his lab at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, Engelbart, along with a small team of...

Through photographs of people, events, and machines, Digital Equipment Corporation tells the story of the unassuming computer revolutionaries who reshaped the technological world.From its inception in 1957, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts, carved itself a role in American business unlike any...

From dial-up to wi-fi, an engaging cultural history of the commercial web industryIn the 1990s, the World Wide Web helped transform the Internet from the domain of computer scientists to a playground for mass audiences. As URLs leapt off computer screens and onto cereal...

Continuing the story of Commodore where the previous book, Commodore: A Company on the Edge left off, this book takes a look at Commodore's most tumultuous years. How did the Amiga, a computer now widely regarded as having been five years ahead of its...

MOONBIT is a hybrid work comprised of experimental poetry and a critical theory of the poetics and politics of computer code. It offers an extended intellectual and creative engagement with the affordances of computer software through multiple readings and re-writings of a singular text,...

In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the...

The contentious history of the computer programmers who developed the software that made the computer revolution possible.This is a book about the computer revolution of the mid-twentieth century and the people who made it possible. Unlike most histories of computing, it is not a...

Volume 3 of the PoC GTFO collection--read as Proof of Concept or Get the Fuck Out--continues the series of wildly popular collections of this hacker journal. Contributions range from humorous poems to deeply technical essays bound in the form of a bible. The International...

This is the collector's hardback edition of the Amstrad Games Book.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,...

First published in 1985, this book enabled a whole new generation to learn game coding on their Atari 130XE - one of Atari's acclaimed 8-bit home computers. The XE had two joysticks rather than the four of its sibling models, however it did come...

First published in 1985, this book enabled a whole new generation to learn game coding on their Atari 130XE - one of Atari's acclaimed 8-bit home computers. The XE had two joysticks rather than the four of its sibling models, however it did come...

"In many ways, this is The Phoenix Project for the PowerShell world."Introduced in 2006, Microsoft's PowerShell made an immediate, positive impact on its server products and in the lives of the people who administer them. The world's first object-oriented shell, the first designed-from-scratch shell...

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was one of the most popular home computers in British history, selling over five million units in its 1980s heyday. Amongst the thousands of games released for the Spectrum during its lifetime, the text adventure game was to emerge as...

Computer manufacturing is--after cars, energy production and illegal drugs--the largest industry in the world, and it's one of the last great success stories in American business. Accidental Empires is the trenchant, vastly readable history of that industry, focusing as much on the astoundingly odd...

Silicon Valley gets all the credit for digital creativity, but this account of the pre-PC world, when computing meant more than using mature consumer technology, challenges that triumphalism. The invention of the personal computer liberated users from corporate mainframes and brought computing into homes....

An accessible and fascinating exploration of how Alan Turing's mathematical theory gave rise to modern computer science and applications--from the desktops to cell phones In 1936, when he was just 24 years old, Alan Turing wrote a remarkable paper in which he outlined the...

The sprawl of Adventure. The addictiveness of Breakout. The intensity of Space Invaders.Once upon a time, you could only experience this kind of excitement at the arcade. But in 1977 that changed forever. You, and maybe a friend or a sibling, could instantly teleport...

The Sierra Adventure tells the story of legendary computer game company Sierra On-Line, developers of industry defining titles such as King's Quest, Quest for Glory, and Leisure Suit Larry. Told through the words of the people who worked there, designers, artists, programmers, animators, musicians,...

Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's design and use.Since the late 1960s the Internet has grown from a single experimental...

Back into the Storm: A Design Engineer's Story of Commodore Computers in the 1980s brings you on a journey recounting the experiences of working at Commodore Business Machines from 1983 to 1986, as seen through the eyes of a young hardware engineer, Bil Herd....

Launched in 1981, Sir Clive Sinclair's ZX81 - successor to his ZX80 released the year before - was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public. It was a hugely successful machine, with over one and a half million...

Launched in 1981, Sir Clive Sinclair's ZX81 - successor to his ZX80 released the year before - was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public. It was a hugely successful machine, with over one and a half million...

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...

From their haunts in the shadowy corner of a bar, front and center at a convenience store, or reigning over a massive mall installation bursting with light, sound, and action, arcade games have been thrilling and addicting quarter-bearers of all ages ever since Pong...

In the 1970s, while their contemporaries were protesting the computer as a tool of dehumanization and oppression, a motley collection of college dropouts, hippies, and electronics fanatics were engaged in something much more subversive. Obsessed with the idea of getting computer power into their...

The New Kingmakers documents the rise of the developer class, and provides strategies for companies to adapt to the new technology landscape. From recruiting to retention, it provides a playbook to work more efficiently and effectively with the most important members of your organization.Author:...

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...

The history of computing has its origins at the outset of civilization, and the need for increasingly sophisticated calculations has grown as towns and communities evolved.This lively and fascinating text traces the key developments in computation - from 3000 B.C. to the present day...

"Gamers at Work is a critical resource for new and experienced business leaders--for anyone who feels unprepared for the demanding and seemingly insurmountable trials ahead of them." --Peter Molyneux OBE, founder, Lionhead Studios "Gamers at Work explores every imaginable subtlety of the video-game industry...