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This book charts the take-up of IT in Britain, as seen through the eyes of one company. It examines how the dawn of the digital computer age in Britain took place for different applications, from early government-sponsored work on secret defence projects, to the growth of the market for Elliott computers for civil applications. Features: charts the establishment of Elliott’s Borehamwood Research Laboratories, and the roles played by John Coales and Leon Bagrit; examines early Elliott digital computers designed for classified military applications and for GCHQ; describes the analogue computers developed by Elliott-Automation; reviews the development of the first commercial Elliot computers and the growth of applications in industrial automation; includes a history of airborne computers by a former director of Elliott Flight Automation; discusses the computer architectures and systems software for Elliott computers; investigates the mergers, takeovers and eventual closure of the Borehamwood laboratories.
The pixel as the organizing principle of all pictures, from cave paintings to Toy Story. The Great Digital Convergence of all media types into one universal digital medium occurred, with little fanfare, at the recent turn of the millennium. The bit became the universal medium, and the pixel--a particular packaging of bits--conquered the world. Henceforward, nearly every picture in the world would be composed of pixels--cell phone pictures, app interfaces, Mars Rover transmissions, book illustrations, videogames. In A Biography of the Pixel, Pixar cofounder Alvy Ray Smith argues that the pixel is the organizing principle of most modern media, and he presents a few simple but profound ideas th...
This book is a collection of refereed invited papers on the history of computing from the 1940s to the 1990s with one paper going back to look at Italian calculating/computing machines from the first century to the 20th century. The 22 papers cover a wide range of computing related topics such as specific early computer systems, their construction, their use and their users; software programming and operating systems; people involved in the theory, design and use of these computers; computer education; and conservation of computing technology. Many of the authors were actually involved in the events they describe and share their specific reflections on the history of computing.
This Festschrift volume, published in honor of Brian Randell on the occasion of his 75th birthday, contains a total of 37 refereed contributions. Two biographical papers are followed by the six invited papers that were presented at the conference 'Dependable and Historic Computing: The Randell Tales', held during April 7-8, 2011 at Newcastle University, UK. The remaining contributions are authored by former scientific colleagues of Brian Randell. The papers focus on the core of Brian Randell’s work: the development of computing science and the study of its history. Moreover, his wider interests are reflected and so the collection comprises papers on software engineering, storage fragmentation, computer architecture, programming languages and dependability. There is even a paper that echoes Randell’s love of maps. After an early career with English Electric and then with IBM in New York and California, Brian Randell joined Newcastle University. His main research has been on dependable computing in all its forms, especially reliability, safety and security aspects, and he has led several major European collaborative projects.
Discusses early computer design at Manchester University and highlights five commercially available derivatives.
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 grou...
Alan Turing has long proved a subject of fascination, but following the centenary of his birth in 2012, the code-breaker, computer pioneer, mathematician (and much more) has become even more celebrated with much media coverage, and several meetings, conferences and books raising public awareness of Turing's life and work. This volume will bring together contributions from some of the leading experts on Alan Turing to create a comprehensive guide to Turing that will serve as a useful resource for researchers in the area as well as the increasingly interested general reader. The book will cover aspects of Turing's life and the wide range of his intellectual activities, including mathematics, code-breaking, computer science, logic, artificial intelligence and mathematical biology, as well as his subsequent influence.
This book provides an overview of the confluence of ideas in Turing’s era and work and examines the impact of his work on mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. It combines contributions by well-known scientists on the history and philosophy of computability theory as well as on generalised Turing computability. By looking at the roots and at the philosophical and technical influence of Turing’s work, it is possible to gather new perspectives and new research topics which might be considered as a continuation of Turing’s working ideas well into the 21st century.
The development of the first electronic digital computers in the 1940s signaled the beginning of a new and distinctive type of industry—an industry marked by competition through innovation, and by the large percentage of revenues spent on research and development. Written as a companion volume to Targeting the Computer: Government Support and International Competition, this comprehensive volume provides a new understanding to the complex forces that have shaped the computer industry during the past four decades. Kenneth Flamm identifies the origins of technologies important to the creation of computers and traces the roots of individual technologies to the specific research groups and prog...