Items related to Makin' Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer (History...
with the cooperation of Robert V. D. CampbellThis collection of technical essays and reminiscences is a companion volume to I. Bernard Cohen's biography, Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. After an overview by Cohen, Part I presents the first complete publication of Aiken's 1937 proposal for an automatic calculating machine, which was later realized as the Mark I, as well as recollections of Aiken's first two machines by the chief engineer in charge of construction of Mark II, Robert Campbell, and the principal programmer of Mark I, Richard Bloch. Henry Tropp describes Aiken's hostility to the exclusive use of binary numbers in computational systems and his alternative approach.Part II contains essays on Aiken's administrative and teaching styles by former students Frederick Brooks and Peter Calingaert and an essay by Gregory Welch on the difficulties Aiken faced in establishing a computer science program at Harvard. Part III contains recollections by people who worked or st
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About the Author:
William Aspray is Bill and Lewis Suit Professor of Information Technologies in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the coeditor of Women and Information Technology: Research on Underrepresentation (2006) and The Internet and American Business (2008), both published by the MIT Press.
Review:
"The biography, and its companion, Makin' Numbers, a collection of essays and retrospectives by Aiken's contemporaries, guarantee that the Aiken lore will not be lost. But they provide much more. These books are based on interviews with Aiken and his contemporaries, on many early reports and other documents, and to some degree on Cohen's personal knowledge of Aiken from the time when Cohen, now Thomas professor for the history of science emeritus, started to teach at Harvard... These books document the explosion of novelties in the Comp Lab at a time when almost nothing was known about computing, and have done us a great service by preserving, fondly but dispassionately and exhaustively, the memory of Aiken and those who worked with him." -- Harry R. Lewis, Harvard Magazine, May/June 1999
"The biography, and its companion, Makin' Numbers, a collection of essays and retrospectives by Aiken's contemporaries, guarantee that the Aiken lore will not be lost. But they provide much more. These books are based on interviews with Aiken and his contemporaries, on many early reports and other documents, and to some degree on Cohen's personal knowledge of Aiken from the time when Cohen, now Thomas professor for the history of science emeritus, started to teach at Harvard... These books document the explosion of novelties in the Comp Lab at a time when almost nothing was known about computing, and have done us a great service by preserving, fondly but dispassionately and exhaustively, the memory of Aiken and those who worked with him." -- Harry R. Lewis, Harvard Magazine, May/June 1999
"The biography, and its companion, Makin' Numbers, a collection of essays and retrospectives by Aiken's contemporaries, guarantee that the Aiken lore will not be lost. But they provide much more. These books are based on interviews with Aiken and his contemporaries, on many early reports and other documents, and to some degree on Cohen's personal knowledge of Aiken from the time when Cohen, now Thomas professor for the history of science emeritus, started to teach at Harvard... These books document the explosion of novelties in the Comp Lab at a time when almost nothing was known about computing, and have done us a great service by preserving, fondly but dispassionately and exhaustively, the memory of Aiken and those who worked with him." -- Harry R. Lewis, Harvard Magazine, May/June 1999
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- PublisherMit Pr
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0262519739
- ISBN 13 9780262519731
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages320
- EditorCohen I. Bernard, Welch Gregory W., Aspray William
- Rating
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