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I find the history of the computer industry fascinating. Understanding how we got here is the key to figuring out why we are going wherever it is that technology will take us next. Paul Ceruzzi’s book A History of Modern Computing is the most academic work of this type I have ever read. Fortunately that doesn’t mean that it’s dry reading, but it does mean that there are many, many footnotes per page. In fact reading the footnotes (actually printed as endnotes in a section before the Bibliography and the Index) can be interesting, even addictive, if you find a topic where you want more details. Who first proposed online transaction processing and interactive databases? Would you believe J. Presper Eckert, co-inventor of the ENIAC, in the late 1940s? There were no computers as we know them know them now yet Eckert had the vision to see that ENIAC, which was really a calculator not a computer, would lead to far more useful tools in business. After covering the development of ENIAC and the UNIVAC Corporation and how Eckert and his partner John Mauchly were inventors who lost control of their company and the industry they spawned, the book proceeds to cover computing history in chunks that follow the major technical breakthroughs like the transistor, magnetic core memory, integrated circuits and microprocessors to name just a few. The book also notes trends and where and how those trends affect the industry and users. Some were obvious from the beginning, like miniaturization. We moved from vacuum tubes to transistors to integrated circuits to microprocessors. If you don’t think we’re in the age of microprocessors, consider that the latest IBM mainframes run on bunch of PowerPC microprocessors. Along the way, Ceruzzi also notes the roots of technology and how some things have influenced how things still work today. Many basic concepts of interactive computing are directly traceable back to the Digital Equipment Corp. DECsystem 10, the first widely available timesharing machine. One of these links comes from the time from Bill Gates “tested” the DECsystem 10 (PDP-10) installed by a Seattle-based service bureau. Later it was a PDP-10 that Gates and Paul Allen used at Harvard to write the BASIC they sold to Ed Roberts for the Altair 8800 – the first widely available personal computer. Thruout the book it’s amazing how many people were influenced by the PDP-10 and its TOPS-10 operating system. I first picked up this book at the public library and after starting to read it, found it so interesting that I actually bought my own copy. If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is. Like all books that are a little outside the mainstream, this one can be difficult to find. I did some searching on a variety of book store web sites before I found it at a good discount. A History of Modern Computing, Second Edition, by Paul E. Ceruzzi, 2003, The MIT Press, 350 pages plus 95 pages of notes, bibliography and index. |
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