Alfred D Chandler jr.: Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries (2001/2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, computer industry, consumer electronics, consumer electronics industry, history of technology, technology
Consumer electronics and computers redefined life and work in the twentieth century. In Inventing the Electronic Century, Pulitzer Prize-winning business historian Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. traces their origins and worldwide development. From electronics prime mover RCA in the 1920s to Sony and Matsushita’s dramatic rise in the 1970s; from IBM’s dominance in computer technology in the 1950s to Microsoft’s stunning example of the creation of competitive advantage, this masterful analysis is essential reading for every manager and student of technology.
With the assistance of Takashi Hikino, Andrew Von Nordenflycht
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2005
Volume 47 of Harvard studies in business history
ISBN 0674018052, 9780674018051
Length 321 pages
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Kristen Haring: Ham Radio’s Technical Culture (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of technology, radio, technology
Decades before the Internet, ham radio provided instantaneous, global, person-to-person communication. Hundreds of thousands of amateur radio operators—a predominantly male, middle- and upper-class group known as “hams”—built and operated two-way radios for recreation in mid twentieth century America. In Ham Radio’s Technical Culture, Kristen Haring examines why so many men adopted the technical hobby of ham radio from the 1930s through 1970s and how the pastime helped them form identity and community.
Ham radio required solitary tinkering with sophisticated electronics equipment, often isolated from domestic activities in a “radio shack,” yet the hobby thrived on fraternal interaction. Conversations on the air grew into friendships, and hams gathered in clubs or met informally for “eyeball contacts.” Within this community, hobbyists developed distinct values and practices with regard to radio, creating a particular “technical culture.” Outsiders viewed amateur radio operators with a mixture of awe and suspicion, impressed by hams’ mastery of powerful technology but uneasy about their contact with foreigners, especially during periods of political tension.
Drawing on a wealth of personal accounts found in radio magazines and newsletters and from technical manuals, trade journals, and government documents, Haring describes how ham radio culture rippled through hobbyists’ lives. She explains why hi-tech employers recruited hams and why electronics manufacturers catered to these specialty customers. She discusses hams’ position within the military and civil defense during World War II and the Cold War as well as the effect of the hobby on family dynamics. By considering ham radio in the context of other technical hobbies—model building, photography, high-fidelity audio, and similar leisure pursuits—Haring highlights the shared experiences of technical hobbyists. She shows that tinkerers influenced attitudes toward technology beyond hobby communities, enriching the general technical culture by posing a vital counterpoint.
Publisher MIT Press, 2007
Series: Inside technology
ISBN 0262083558, 9780262083553
Length 220 pages
Sungook Hong: Wireless: From Marconi’s Black-Box to the Audion (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · communication technology, history of communications, history of technology, radio, technology, telegraphy, wireless networks
By 1897 Guglielmo Marconi had transformed James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic waves into a workable wireless telegraphy system, and by 1907 Lee de Forest had invented the audion, a feedback amplifier and oscillator that opened the way to practical radio transmission. Fifteen years after Marconi’s invention, wireless had become an essential means of communication, as well as a hobby for many.
This book offers a new perspective on the early days of wireless communication. Drawing on previously untapped archival evidence and recent work in the history and sociology of science and technology, it examines the substance and context of both experimental and theoretical aspects of engineering and scientific practices in the first years of this technology. It offers new insights into the relationship between Marconi and his scientific advisor, the physicist John Ambrose Fleming (inventor of the vacuum tube). It includes the full story of the infamous 1903 incident in which Marconi’s opponent Nevil Maskelyne interfered with Fleming’s public demonstration of Marconi’s syntonic (tuning) system at the Royal Institution by sending derogatory messages from his own transmitter. The analysis of the Maskelyne affair highlights the struggle between Marconi and his opponents, the efficacy of early syntonic devices, Fleming’s role as a public witness to Marconi’s private experiments, and the nature of Marconi’s “shows.” It also provides a rare case study of how the credibility of an engineer can be created, consumed, and suddenly destroyed. The book concludes with a discussion of de Forest’s audion and the shift from wireless telegraphy to radio.
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
Series: Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology
ISBN 0262082985, 9780262082983
Length 248 pages
Kurt W. Beyer: Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, programming, technology
A Hollywood biopic about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992) would go like this: a young professor abandons the ivy-covered walls of academia to serve her country in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and finds herself on the front lines of the computer revolution. She works hard to succeed in the all-male computer industry, is almost brought down by personal problems but survives them, and ends her career as a celebrated elder stateswoman of computing, a heroine to thousands, hailed as the inventor of computer programming. Throughout Hopper’s later years, the popular media told this simplified version of her life story. In Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, Kurt Beyer goes beyond the screenplay-ready myth to reveal a more authentic Hopper, a vibrant and complex woman whose career paralleled the meteoric trajectory of the postwar computer industry.
Hopper made herself “one of the boys” in Howard Aiken’s wartime Computation Laboratory at Harvard, then moved on to the Eckert and Mauchly Computer Corporation. Both rebellious and collaborative, she was influential in male-dominated military and business organizations at a time when women were encouraged to devote themselves to housework and childbearing. Hopper’s greatest technical achievement was to create the tools that would allow humans to communicate with computers in terms other than ones and zeroes. This advance influenced all future programming and software design and laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personal computers.
Publisher MIT Press, 2009
Series: Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation
ISBN 026201310X, 9780262013109
Length 389 pages
Paul E. Ceruzzi: Internet Alley. High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of technology, internet, military, technology
Much of the world’s Internet management and governance takes place in a corridor extending west from Washington, DC, through northern Virginia toward Washington Dulles International Airport. Much of the United States’ military planning and analysis takes place here as well. At the center of that corridor is Tysons Corner—an unincorporated suburban crossroads once dominated by dairy farms and gravel pits. Today, the government contractors and high- tech firms—companies like DynCorp, CACI, Verisign, and SAIC—that now populate this corridor have created an “Internet Alley” off the Washington Beltway. In Internet Alley, Paul Ceruzzi examines this compact area of intense commercial development and describes its transformation into one of the most dynamic and prosperous regions in the country.
Ceruzzi explains how a concentration of military contractors carrying out weapons analysis, systems engineering, operations research, and telecommunications combined with suburban growth patterns to drive the region’s development. The dot-com bubble’s burst was offset here, he points out, by the government’s growing national security-related need for information technology. Ceruzzi looks in detail at the nature of the work carried out by these government contractors and how it can be considered truly innovative in terms of both technology and management.
Today in Tysons Corner, clusters of sleek new office buildings housing high-technology companies stand out against the suburban landscape, and the upscale Tysons Galleria Mall is neighbor to a government-owned radio tower marked by a sign warning visitors not to photograph or sketch it. Ceruzzi finds that a variety of perennially relevant issues intersect here, making it both a literal and figurative crossroads: federal support of scientific research, the shift of government activities to private contractors, local politics of land use, and the postwar movement from central cities to suburbs.
Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262033747, 9780262033749
Length 242 pages
Philip Morrison, Emily Morrison (eds.): Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines (1961)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, technology
Selected writings by Charles Babbage and others.
Publisher Dover Publications, 1961
Series: Dover histories and classics of science
ISBN: 0486200124, 978-0486200125
Length 400 pages
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Comment (0)Bruce Collier, James H. MacLachlan: Charles Babbage and the Engines of Perfection (1998)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, mathematics, technology
Charles Babbage, “the grandfather of the modern computer,” did not live to see even one of his calculating machines at work. A dazzling genius with vision extending far beyond the limitations of the Victorian age, Babbage successfully calculated a table of logarithms during his years at Cambridge University, allowing mathematical calculations to be executed with extreme precision. Only the possibility of human error prevented complete accuracy, and Babbage understood that the only way to attain perfection is to leave the human mind entirely out of the equation. He devoted most of his life and spent most of his private fortune and government stipend trying to improve his difference engines and analytical engines.
Bruce Collier and James MacLachlan chronicle Babbage’s education and scientific career, his remarkably active social life and long string of personal tragedies, his forays into philosophy and economics, his successes and failures, and the biggest disappointment of his life– his ingenious inventions were centuries ahead of the primitive capabilities of Victorian technology.
Publisher Oxford University Press, 1998
Series: Oxford portraits in science
ISBN 0195089979, 9780195089974
Length 123 pages
Paul E. Ceruzzi: A History of Modern Computing, 2nd ed. (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, software, technology
This engaging history covers modern computing from the development of the first electronic digital computer through the dot-com crash. The author concentrates on five key moments of transition: the transformation of the computer in the late 1940s from a specialized scientific instrument to a commercial product; the emergence of small systems in the late 1960s; the beginning of personal computing in the 1970s; the spread of networking after 1985; and, in a chapter written for this edition, the period 1995-2001. The new material focuses on the Microsoft antitrust suit, the rise and fall of the dot-coms, and the advent of open source software, particularly Linux.
Within the chronological narrative, the book traces several overlapping threads: the evolution of the computer’s internal design; the effect of economic trends and the Cold War; the long-term role of IBM as a player and as a target for upstart entrepreneurs; the growth of software from a hidden element to a major character in the story of computing; and the recurring issue of the place of information and computing in a democratic society. The focus is on the United States (though Europe and Japan enter the story at crucial points), on computing per se rather than on applications such as artificial intelligence, and on systems that were sold commercially and installed in quantities.
Edition 2
Publisher MIT Press, 2003
Series: History of computing
ISBN 0262532034, 9780262532037
Length 445 pages
Gerard O’Regan: A Brief History of Computing (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, programming, software, technology
The history of computing has its origins at the outset of civilization. As towns and communities evolved there was a need for increasingly sophisticated calculations. This book traces the evolution of computation, from early civilisations 3000 B.C. to the latest key developments in modern times.
This useful and lively text provides a comprehensive introduction to the key topics in the history of computing, in an easy-to-follow and concise manner. It covers the significant areas and events in the field – from the ancient Egyptians through to the present day – and both gives the reader a flavour of the history and stimulates further study in the subject.
Features:
• Ideal for undergraduate courses, it offers many pedagogical features such as chapter-opening key topics, chapter introductions, exercises, chapter summaries, glossary, etc.
• Offers detailed information on major figures in computing, such as Boole, Babbage, Shannon , Turing and Von Neumann
• Includes a history of programming languages, including syntax and semantics
• Presents an overview of the history of software engineering
• Discusses the progress of artificial intelligence, with extension to such key disciplines as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neural networks and cybernetics
• Examines the history of the Internet revolution, World Wide Web and Dot-Com Bubble
• Follows the evolution of a number of major technology companies such as IBM, Motorola and Microsoft
Focusing on the fundamental areas in the computing field, this clearly written and broad-ranging text will capture the attention of the reader and greatly benefit computer science students. In addition, it is suitable for self-study, and will also be of interest to the more casual reader.
Publisher Springer, 2008
ISBN 1848000839, 9781848000834
Length 245 pages
James Essinger: Jacquard’s Web: How a Hand-Loom led to the Birth of the Information Age (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, technology
* A fascinating look at the previously uninvestigated story of a how a loom invented 200 years ago led to the development of the computer age
* Provides a new perspective on the history of computing and information technology
* Full of interesting and colourful characters: the modest but dedicated Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the brilliant but temperamental polymath Charles Babbage, and the imaginative and perceptive Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter
* Contains much compelling new material that has never been published for a general readership until now
Jacquard’s Web is the story of some of the most ingenious inventors the world has ever known, a fascinating account of how a hand-loom invented in Napoleonic France led to the development of the modern information age. James Essinger, a master story-teller, shows through a series of remarkable and meticulously researched historical connections (spanning two centuries and never investigated before) that the Jacquard loom kick-started a process of scientific evolution which would lead directly to the development of the modern computer.
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2007
ISBN 0192805789, 9780192805782
Length 302 pages
R. L. Rutsky: High Technē: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, art, cyberpunk, history of technology, posthumanism, technology
In an age of high tech, our experience of technology has changed tremendously, yet the definition of technology has remained largely unquestioned. High Techne redresses this gap in thinking about technology, examining the shifting relations of technology, art, and culture from the beginnings of modernity to contemporary technocultures.
Drawing on the Greek root of technology (techne, generally translated as “art, skill, or craft”), R. L. Rutsky challenges both the modernist notion of technology as an instrument or tool and the conventional idea of a noninstrumental aesthetics. Today, technology and aesthetics have again begun to come together: even basketball shoes are said to exhibit a “high-tech style” and the most advanced technology is called “state of the art.” Rutsky charts the history and vicissitudes of this new high-tech techne up to our day — from Fritz Lang to Octavia Butler, Thomas Edison to Japanese Anime, constructivism to cyberspace.
Progressing from the major art movements ofmodernism to contemporary science fiction and cultural theory, Rutsky provides clear and compelling evidence of a shift in the cultural conceptions of technology and art and demonstrates the centrality of technology to modernism and postmodernism.
Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 1999
ISBN 0816633568, 9780816633562
Length 196 pages
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Michael A. Hiltzik: Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age (2000)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1970s, 1980s, computing, engineering, history of computing, history of technology, technology
In the bestselling tradition of The Soul of a New Machine, Dealers of Lightning is a fascinating journey of intellectual creation. In the 1970s and ’80s, Xerox Corporation brought together a brain-trust of engineering geniuses, a group of computer eccentrics dubbed PARC. This brilliant group created several monumental innovations that triggered a technological revolution, including the first personal computer, the laser printer, and the graphical interface (one of the main precursors of the Internet), only to see these breakthroughs rejected by the corporation. Yet, instead of giving up, these determined inventors turned their ideas into empires that radically altered contemporary life and changed the world.
Based on extensive interviews with the scientists, engineers, administrators, and executives who lived the story, this riveting chronicle details PARC’s humble beginnings through its triumph as a hothouse for ideas, and shows why Xerox was never able to grasp, and ultimately exploit, the cutting-edge innovations PARC delivered. Dealers of Lightning offers an unprecedented look at the ideas, the inventions, and the individuals that propelled Xerox PARC to the frontier of technohistoiy–and the corporate machinations that almost prevented it from achieving greatness.
Publisher HarperBusiness, 2000
ISBN 0887309895, 9780887309892
Length 480 pages
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Comment (0)David Alan Grier: Too Soon to Tell: Essays for the End of the Computer Revolution (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, engineering, history of computing, history of technology, technology
Based on author David A. Grier’s column “In Our Time,” which runs monthly in Computer magazine, Too Soon To Tell presents a collection of essays skillfully written about the computer age, an era that began February 1946. Examining ideas that are both contemporary and timeless, these chronological essays examine the revolutionary nature of the computer, the relation between machines and human institutions, and the connections between fathers and sons to provide general readers with a picture of a specific technology that attempted to rebuild human institutions in its own image.
Publisher Wiley-IEEE, 2009
ISBN 0470080353, 9780470080351
Length 238 pages
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Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.): Picturing Machines 1400-1700 (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, engineering, geometry, history of technology, technology, visualization
Technical drawings by the architects and engineers of the Renaissance made use of a range of new methods of graphic representation. These drawings—among them Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawings of mechanical devices—have long been studied for their aesthetic qualities and technological ingenuity, but their significance for the architects and engineers themselves is seldom considered. The essays in Picturing Machines 1400-1700 take this alternate perspective and look at how drawing shaped the practice of early modern engineering. They do so through detailed investigations of specific images, looking at over 100 that range from sketches to perspective views to thoroughly constructed projections.
In early modern engineering practice, drawings were not merely visualizations of ideas but acted as models that shaped ideas. Picturing Machines establishes basic categories for the origins, purposes, functions, and contexts of early modern engineering illustrations, then treats a series of topics that not only focus on the way drawings became an indispensable means of engineering but also reflect the main stages in their historical development. The authors examine the social interaction conveyed by early machine images and their function as communication between practitioners; the knowledge either conveyed or presupposed by technical drawings, as seen in those of Giorgio Martini and Leonardo; drawings that required familiarity with geometry or geometric optics, including the development of architectural plans; and technical illustrations that bridged the gap between practical and theoretical mechanics.
Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262122693, 9780262122696
Length 347 pages
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Helaine Selin (ed.): Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures (1997)
Filed under book | Tags: · astronomy, history of science, history of technology, mathematics, medicine, science, technology
Here, at last, is the massively updated and augmented second edition of this landmark encyclopedia. The electronic version of this two-volume work contains approximately 1000 entries dealing in depth with the history of the scientific, technological and medical accomplishments of cultures outside of the United States and Europe.
The entries consist of fully updated articles together with hundreds of entirely new topics adorned with full color pictures. This unique reference work includes intercultural articles on broad topics such as mathematics and astronomy as well as thoughtful philosophical articles on concepts and ideas related to the study of non-Western Science, such as rationality, objectivity, and method.
You’ll also find material on religion and science, East and West, and magic and science. This amazing resource even contains entries on fascinating esoteric topics such as Native American mathematics, Polynesian navigation, and African Metallurgy.There are also biographical articles for those cultures where individual scientists are known to us, such as China and the Islamic world.
Publisher Springer, 1997
ISBN 0792340663, 9780792340669
Length 1117 pages
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