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Discover the birth of the technological world we now live in through the origins of 12 influential computers built between 1939 and 1950.
In 1940, a computer was someone who ploughed through grueling calculations each day. A decade later, a computer was a buzzing machine that filled a room. This book tells the story of how our world was reshaped by a dozen such computers — and the geniuses that brought them into being, from Alan Turing to John von Neumann.
This world tour through the modern history of computing begins in 1939 with the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry computer (ABC). The story of computing in World War II takes readers through Germany, UK, and the US, before covering the explosive post-war years when anything seemed possible. Learn the fascinating stories behind the Manchester Baby, EDSAC, EDVAC, UNIVAC, Princeton IAS, and Alan Turing’s Pilot ACE and the birth of artificial intelligence.
The Computers that Made the World chronicles how a new world, built on technology, sprang into being.
- Introduction: Charles Babbage — inventor of the first mechanical computer
- Chapter 1: ABC — the Atanasoff–Berry computer
- Chapter 2: Z3 — an early electromechanical computer
- Chapter 3: Complex Number Calculator — building the foundations of digital computers
- Chapter 4: Colossus — code-breaking computer that helped win a World War
- Chapter 5: Harvard Mark 1 — another pioneering electromechanical computer
- Chapter 6: ENIAC — the first programmable digital computer
- Chapter 7: Manchester Baby — the first electronic stored-program computer
- Chapter 8: EDSAC — pioneering British computer
- Chapter 9: EDVAC, UNIVAC, & Princeton IAS — three computers with shared origins
- Chapter 10: Pilot ACE — vacuum-tube powered early computing
- Chapter 11: What happened next — the growth of commercial computing