The Computers that Made the World
eBook - ePub

The Computers that Made the World

  1. 296 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Computers that Made the World

About this book

This book tells the story of the birth of the technological world we now live in. It chronicles how computers reshaped World War II. And it does it all through the origins of 12 influential computers built between 1939 and 1950.

In 1940, a computer was someone who ploughed through gruelling calculations each day. A decade later, a computer was a buzzing machine that filled a room. This book tells the story of how our world was reshaped by a dozen such computers — and the geniuses that brought them into being, from Alan Turing to John von Neumann.

You'll discover how these pioneers shortened World War II, and hidden truths that governments didn't want you to know. But this isn't just a story about how these computers came to be, or the fascinating people behind them: it's a story about how a new world order, built on technology, sprang into being.

This book is a world tour through the modern history of computing, and it begins in 1939 with the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry computer (ABC). From there, the book moves on to the Berlin-born Zuse Z3 and the Bell Labs’ Complex Number Calculator, before we enter the World War II era with Colossus, Harvard Mark I, and then ENIAC, the first general-purpose digital computer.

The story of computing in World War II takes us through Germany, UK, and the US, before covering the explosive post-war years when anything seemed possible. You’ll discover the fascinating stories behind the Manchester Baby, EDSAC, EDVAC, UNIVAC, Princeton IAS, and Alan Turing’s Pilot ACE and the birth of artificial intelligence.

In The Computers that Made the World, you'll not only learn about the computers that shaped the world we live in, but what happened behind the scenes.

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Yes, you can access The Computers that Made the World by Tim Danton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Computer Science & Computer Science General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Timeline – From 1936 to 1950
  6. Introduction – Charles Babbage – inventor of the first mechanical computer
  7. Chapter 1: ABC – The Atanasoff-Berry computer
  8. Chapter 2: Zuse Z3 – An early electromechanical computer
  9. Chapter 3: Complex Number Calculator – Building the foundations of digital computers
  10. Chapter 4: Colossus – Code-breaking computer that helped win a World War
  11. Chapter 5: Harvard Mark I – Another pioneering electromechanical computer
  12. Chapter 6: ENIAC – The first programmable digital computer
  13. Chapter 7: Manchester Baby – The first electronic stored-program computer
  14. Chapter 8: EDSAC – Pioneering British computer
  15. Chapter 9: EDVAC, UNIVAC, & Princeton IAS – Three computers with shared origins
  16. Chapter 10: Pilot ACE – Vacuum-tube powered early computing
  17. Chapter 11: What happened next – The growth of commercial computing
  18. Timeline – From 1951 to 1965