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The computer book : from the abacus to artificial intelligence, 250 milestones in the history of computer science
\"Two expert authors, with decades of experience working in computer research and innovation, explore topics including the Sumerian abacus, the first spam message, Morse code, cryptography, early computers, Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics, UNIX and early programming languages, movies, video games, mainframes, minis and micros, hacking, virtual reality, and more\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
When Computers Were Human
Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term \"computer\" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, \"I wish I'd used my calculus,\" hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.
eBook
How the computer changed history
How the Computer Changed History examines the development of the computer, how it works, and how it has become a standard machine used in businesses, homes, and industries. Features include essential facts, a glossary, selected bibliography, websites, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and maps, charts, and diagrams. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
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Programming Language Cultures
\"In this book, Brian Lennon demonstrates the power of a philological approach to the history of programming languages and their usage cultures. In chapters focused on specific programming languages such as SNOBOL and JavaScript, as well as on code comments, metasyntactic variables, the very early history of programming, and the concept of DevOps, Lennon emphasizes the histories of programming languages in their individual specificities over their abstract formal or structural characteristics, viewing them as carriers and sometimes shapers of specific cultural histories. The book's philological approach to programming languages presents a natural, sensible, and rigorous way for researchers trained in the humanities to perform research on computing in a way that draws on their own expertise. Combining programming knowledge with a humanistic analysis of the social and historical dimensions of computing, Lennon offers researchers in literar
eBook
Computers
\"Learn all about the history of computers, from how they were first invented to how they impact our lives today.\"-- Provided by publisher.5
Book
The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann
In 1942, Lt. Herman H. Goldstine, a former mathematics professor, was stationed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. It was there that he assisted in the creation of the ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer. The ENIAC was operational in 1945, but plans for a new computer were already underway. The principal source of ideas for the new computer was John von Neumann, who became Goldstine's chief collaborator. Together they developed EDVAC, successor to ENIAC. After World War II, at the Institute for Advanced Study, they built what was to become the prototype of the present-day computer. Herman Goldstine writes as both historian and scientist in this first examination of the development of computing machinery, from the seventeenth century through the early 1950s. His personal involvement lends a special authenticity to his narrative, as he sprinkles anecdotes and stories liberally through his text.
eBook
Computers : what they are and how to use them
Young readers will discover all the wonderful things that can be accomplished on a computer, as well as the safest way to operate them.
Book
Coin-Operated Americans
Video gaming: it's a boy's world, right? That's what the industry wants us to think. Why and how we came to comply are what Carly A. Kocurek investigates in this provocative consideration of how an industry's craving for respectability hooked up with cultural narratives about technology, masculinity, and youth at the video arcade.
From the dawn of the golden age of video games with the launch of Atari'sPongin 1972, through the industry-wide crash of 1983, to the recent nostalgia-bathed revival of the arcade,Coin-Operated Americansexplores the development and implications of the \"video gamer\" as a cultural identity. This cultural-historical journey takes us to the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, for a close look at the origins of competitive gaming. It immerses us in video gaming's first moral panic, generated by Exidy'sDeath Race(1976), an unlicensed adaptation of the filmDeath Race 2000. And it ventures into the realm of video game films such asTronandWarGames, in which gamers become brilliant, boyish heroes.
Whether conducting a phenomenological tour of a classic arcade or evaluating attempts, then and now, to regulate or eradicate arcades and coin-op video games, Kocurek does more than document the rise and fall of a now-booming industry. Drawing on newspapers, interviews, oral history, films, and television, she examines the factors and incidents that contributed to the widespread view of video gaming as an enclave for young men and boys.
A case study of this once emergent and now revived medium became the presumed enclave of boys and young men,Coin-Operated Americansis history that holds valuable lessons for contemporary culture as we struggle to address pervasive sexism in the domain of video games-and in the digital working world beyond.
eBook
Prehistoric Digital Poetry
Explores pioneering works of digital poetry and
demonstrates how technological constraints that would seemingly
limit the aesthetics of poetry have instead extended and
enriched poetic discourse For the last five
decades, poets have had a vibrant relationship with computers
and digital technology. This book is a documentary study and
analytic history of digital poetry that highlights its major
practitioners and the ways that they have used technology to
foster a new aesthetic. Focusing primarily on programs and
experiments produced before the emergence of the World Wide Web
in the mid-1990s, C. T. Funkhouser analyzes numerous landmark
works of digital poetry to illustrate that the foundations of
today’s most advanced works are rooted in the rudimentary
generative, visual, and interlinked productions of the
genre’s prehistoric period. Since 1959, computers have
been used to produce several types of poetic output, including
randomly generated writings, graphical works (static, animated,
and video formats), and hypertext and hypermedia. Funkhouser
demonstrates how hardware, programming, and software have been
used to compose a range of new digital poetic forms. Several
dozen historical examples, drawn from all of the predominant
approaches to digital poetry, are discussed, highlighting the
transformational and multi-faceted aspects of poetic
composition now available to authors. This account includes
many works, in English and other languages, which have never
before been presented in an English-language publication. In
exploring pioneering works of digital poetry, Funkhouser
demonstrates how technological constraints that would seemingly
limit the aesthetics of poetry have instead extended and
enriched poetic discourse. As a history of early digital poetry
and a record of an era that has passed, this study aspires both
to influence poets working today and to highlight what the
future of digital poetry may hold.
eBook