ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer (History of Computing)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.13 (630 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0262033984 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 360 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-03-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
ENIAC In Action is the best book written on ENIAC in the last two decades Dag Spicer ENIAC In Action is the best book written on ENIAC in the last two decades. In this technically rigorous exploration of ENIAC’s role as the earliest stored program computer, the authors also trace the changing conception of ENIAC’s role among historians and the general public since its completion in 1945.If you’ve ever wondered how ENIAC worked, this is the book for you. But it is much more than a technical description. Taking the r. "Well writing historical text" according to Amazon Customer. I just finished eating lunch with Thomas Haigh and enjoyed reading ENIAC in Action. The text is a materialist approach to understanding the development, use, and the legacy of ENIAC, one of the first programmable machines. Because the historical text primarily focuses on ENIAC as the central figure as opposed to a few individuals, the book presents an array of different contributors to the ENIAC and the development of early computing. This provides . David Redell said The real skinny on ENIAC. This is a really good book -- probably the best on ENIAC so far. It's not light reading by any stretch of the imagination, but if you really want to understand this machine's history and its extremely unusual architecture, this book seems like your best bet.
Conceived in 1943, completed in 1945, and decommissioned in 1955, ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first general-purpose programmable electronic computer. The authors view ENIAC from diverse perspectives -- as a machine of war, as the "first computer," as a material artifact constantly remade by its users, and as a subject of (contradictory) historical narratives. But ENIAC was more than just a milestone on the road to the modern computer. They integrate the history of the machine and its applications, describing the mathematicians, scientists, and engineers who proposed and designed ENIAC as well as the men -- and particularly the women who -- built, programmed, and operated it.. It highlights the complex relationship of ENIAC and its designers to the revolutionary approaches to computer architecture and coding first documented by John von Neumann in 1945.Within this broad sweep, the authors emphasize the crucial but previously neglected years of 1947 to 1948, when ENIAC was reconfigured to run what the authors claim was the first modern computer program to be executed: a simulation of atomic fission for Los Alamos researchers. During its decade of operational life, ENIAC calculated sines and cosines and tested for statistical outliers, plotted the trajectories of bombs and shells, and ran the first numerical weather simulations. ENIAC in Action tells the whole story for the fi
This is a fascinating historical recollection of the struggles, setbacks and triumphs inherent in the ENIAC project. It is in no way an exaggeration to say that if you see a picture of the ENIAC that includes a man and a woman, the man is a prop and the woman is running the thing.--Charles Ashbacher (Mathematical Association of America Reviews, April 7 2016)ENIAC in Action:Making and Remaking the Modern Computer is a nuanced, engaging and thoroughly researched account of the early days of computers, the people who built and operated them, and their old and new applications.It sheds new light on women's role in the emergence of the new discipline of computer science and the new practice of cor