B. Jack Copeland (ed.): The Essential Turing: Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life. Plus the Secrets of Enigma (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · artificial intelligence, artificial life, computing, history of computing, logic, mathematics, philosophy, turing machine
“Alan Turing, pioneer of computing and WWII codebreaker, is one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume for the first time his key writings are made available to a broad, non-specialist readership. They make fascinating reading both in their own right and for their historic significance: contemporary computational theory, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life all spring from this ground-breaking work, which is also rich in philosophical and logical insight. An introduction by leading Turing expert Jack Copeland provides the background and guides the reader through the selection.”
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2004
ISBN 0198250800, 9780198250807
613 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-25)
Comment (1)Kurt W. Beyer: Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, programming, technology
A Hollywood biopic about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992) would go like this: a young professor abandons the ivy-covered walls of academia to serve her country in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and finds herself on the front lines of the computer revolution. She works hard to succeed in the all-male computer industry, is almost brought down by personal problems but survives them, and ends her career as a celebrated elder stateswoman of computing, a heroine to thousands, hailed as the inventor of computer programming. Throughout Hopper’s later years, the popular media told this simplified version of her life story. In Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, Kurt Beyer goes beyond the screenplay-ready myth to reveal a more authentic Hopper, a vibrant and complex woman whose career paralleled the meteoric trajectory of the postwar computer industry.
Hopper made herself “one of the boys” in Howard Aiken’s wartime Computation Laboratory at Harvard, then moved on to the Eckert and Mauchly Computer Corporation. Both rebellious and collaborative, she was influential in male-dominated military and business organizations at a time when women were encouraged to devote themselves to housework and childbearing. Hopper’s greatest technical achievement was to create the tools that would allow humans to communicate with computers in terms other than ones and zeroes. This advance influenced all future programming and software design and laid the foundation for the development of user-friendly personal computers.
Publisher MIT Press, 2009
Series: Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation
ISBN 026201310X, 9780262013109
389 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-25)
Comment (1)Philip Morrison, Emily Morrison (eds.): Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines (1961)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, technology
Selected writings by Charles Babbage and others.
Publisher Dover Publications, 1961
Dover Histories and Classics of Science series
ISBN: 0486200124, 9780486200125
400 pages
PDF (DJVU; no OCR; updated on 2012-7-25)
Comment (1)