Computer: A History of the Information Machine
Encyclopedia
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, not described here, was published in 2004.
, 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."
Martin Campbell-Kelly
Martin Campbell-Kelly is an English computer scientist based at the University of Warwick who has specialised in the history of computing.Campbell-Kelly is professor emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick. He is on the editorial board of the IEEE Annals of the...
and William Aspray. It offers an overview of the history of computing
History of computing
The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables...
and computer hardware which ends with the rise of the world wide web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
in the mid-1990s. A 2nd edition, not described here, was published in 2004.
Table of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part One: Before the Computer
- 1: When Computers Were People
- 2: The Mechanical Office
- 3: BabbageCharles BabbageCharles Babbage, FRS was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer...
'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 IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
- Part Three: Innovation and Expansion
- 7: Real Time: Reaping the Whirlwind
- 8: Software
- 9: New Modes of Computing
- Part Four: Getting Personal
- 10: The Shaping of the Personal ComputerPersonal computerA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
- 11: The Shift To Software
- 12: From the World Brain to The World Wide Web
- 10: The Shaping of the Personal Computer
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 CompuServeCompuServeCompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
, ProdigyProdigy (ISP)Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features.Initially subscribers...
, GEnieGEnieGEnie was an online service created by a General Electric business - GEIS that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around 350,000 users. Peak simultaneous usage was around 10,000 users...
, and America OnlineAOLAOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
sprang up to provide low cost network access [...] While these networks gave access to InternetInternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
for e-mailE-mailElectronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
(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 WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. 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).
Reviews
According to the IEEE Annals of the History of ComputingIEEE Annals of the History of Computing
The IEEE Annals of the History of Computing is a quarterly journal published by the IEEE Computer Society. It contains peer-reviewed articles and other contributions on the history of computing, computer science and computer hardware by computer scientists and historians...
, 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."
External links
- Book citation, Association for Computing MachineryAssociation for Computing MachineryThe Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
(ACM) portal - Book information, Google Books
- Book review, ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society.
- Book review, Project MUSEProject MUSEProject MUSE is an online database of current and back issues of peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. It was founded in 1993 by Todd Kelley and Susan Lewis and is a project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. It had support from the Mellon...
.