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Computer: A History of the Information Machine

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Computer: A History of the Information Machine
AuthorMartin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray
LanguageEnglish
GenreComputer science
PublisherBasic Books/HarperCollins
Publication date
1996; 2nd ed. 2004
Publication placeUnited States
ISBN0-465-02989-2
OCLC59659328
004/.09 20
LC ClassQA76.17 .C36 1996

Computer: A History of the Information Machine is a 1996 book by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. It offers an overview of the history of computing and computer hardware, which ends with the rise of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. A 2nd edition, described below, was published in 2004.[1]

Table of contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Part One: Before the Computer
    • 1: When Computers were People
    • 2: The Mechanical Office
    • 3: Babbage's Dream comes True
  • Part Two: Creating the Computer
    • 4: Inventing the Computer
    • 5: The Computer Becomes a Business Machine
    • 6: The Maturing of the Mainframe: The Rise and Fall of IBM
  • Part Three: Innovation and Expansion
    • 7: Real Time: Reaping the Whirlwind
    • 8: Software
    • 9: New Modes of Computing

Quotes

During the second half of the 1980s, the joys of 'surfing the net,' began to excite the interest of people beyond the professional computer-using communities [...] However, the existing computer networks were largely in government, higher education and business. They were not a free good and were not open to hobbyists or private firms that did not have access to a host computer. To fill this gap, a number of firms such as CompuServe, Prodigy, GEnie, and America Online sprang up to provide low cost network access [...] While these networks gave access to Internet for e-mail (typically on a pay-per-message basis), they did not give the ordinary citizen access to the full range of the Internet, or to the glories of gopherspace or the World Wide Web. In a country whose Constitution enshrines freedom of information, most of its citizens were effectively locked out of the library of the future. The Internet was no longer a technical issue, but a political one. (1996:298).


The revised second edition ends, somewhat ominously:

The Internet is simply too important for its continued existence to be imperiled by an antisocial and lawless minority. (2004:279)

Reviews

According to Michael Mahoney's 1998 review in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Campbell-Kelly and Aspray's account is "a highly readable, broad-brush picture of the development of computing, or rather of the computer industry, from its beginning to the present" which "sets a new standard for the history of computing."[2]

Corrections (for future editions)

References

  1. ^ World Cat entry
  2. ^ Michael S. Mahoney, Review of Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 20(2):86–87, 1998.
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