6 May
2020
6 May
'20
12:22 p.m.
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Odd book
Message-ID: <20200506152915.23EA118C0AA at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
So, I've come across an odd book that might interest some here: "Achieving
Accuray: A Legacy of Computers and Missiles", by Marshall William McMurray.
The first couple of chapters merely re-tell the story of earliest computers
(pre-elecronic and electronic), up through the IBM 701, Elliott 401, NCR 304,
SAGE, CDC 6600, IBM 7090, etc. Competent, but nothing special. Then it
gets interesting, though.
?.
A very unusual and off-beat work.
Noel
Noel,
Thanks for the book recommendation above. I was happy to see that it was available in a
reasonably priced Kindle version.
One of my favorite computer history books is Stan Augarten's 1984 book, Bit by Bit: An
Illustrated History of Computers.
I did manage to find a copy and really enjoyed reading it and looking at the great
photos in it. I was curious to know
a bit more about the author and in ?DuckDuckGoing? him I ran across an online college
course by Haverford University:
http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/bitbybit/bit-by-bit-contents/front-matter…
<http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/bitbybit/bit-by-bit-contents/front-matter/table-of-contents/>
that has the entire text and the photos from Stan Augarten?s book. It is a great way
to read an otherwise hard to find
book. It also has some .pdfs of the lecture slides from the professors who put this great
web site together.
Mark