For my next entry I would like to feature two computer-related titles, The Road Ahead by Bill Gates (004.6 GA) and Electronic Brains : Stories From the Dawn of the Computer Age by Mike Hally (004 HA). For the first, even though it is from 1995 (older than most of the books I will be featuring), I feel somewhat compelled to feature a biography of such a well known person. He is such an eminent and iconic figure in the world for his success, wealth, and even his philanthropy this past decade. This is his only autobiography I know of.
Early in the book, Gates touches on the origins of the PC, which is a really fascinating story. I have heard it told elsewhere, but it was really interesting to hear his version of it. He points out the mistakes and missed opportunities that were made by other major players, and where fate could have turned out differently and made his company a mere footnote in the development of the PC.
But, history turning out as it did, Bill Gates' company, the venerable Microsoft, turned out to be a major force in the evolution of the PC. Gates took advantage of his opportunities at every turn. Equal parts computer whiz kid and astute businessman, Gates quit Harvard upon seeing an Altair 8800 computer on the cover of a Popular Electronics magazine. He and friend Paul Allen formed their software company, Micro-soft to write software for the Altair. The rest, as they say, is history.
There is more history gone over in the book given as an enjoyable narrative. The latter half of the book, though, tends to drag a little because Gates spends a lot of space speculating on the future of the computer and software. Now, given that it is Bill Gates doing the speculating, it is very authoritative, but it cannot help but come across as "in the future, you will get to work in a flying car" sort of talk. All that aside, and with a dozen years of hindsight, I have to say that Gates really had his finger on the pulse of his industry--or maybe it was his hands on the reins!
The book, Electronic Brains : Stories From the Dawn of the Computer Age deals with entirely different epoch in the history of the computer: its Stone Age. The book came out of a BBC radio series on the topic, and was able to go into much more depth on the topic. All in all, the book emulates the sort of quality you would expect from a BBC production.
The work highlights a number of pioneering efforts around the globe working to develop computers between the late '30s and late '50s. What I ended up liking about the book, was that it did not seek the crown the "father of the computer." Rather, the book laid out the accomplishments and the time frame they occurred in and left it largely up to the reader who should be considered the computer pioneer, or if this was even a relevant title.
There is at least a small amount of local pride knowing that probably the earliest candidate for the first electronic computer was built in the basement of a physics building at Iowa State College in 1939 in two men's spare time. It then sat untouched for nearly a decade and was later dismantled.
Interestingly, the word, computer, or spelled computor, seems to have most often referred to the women mathematicians who tended to the early machines as they calculated the ballistic trajectory tables of the guns used in and around World War II. The development of the machines received a boost from the war owing to the large amount of new weapons needing ballistic tables drawn up.
The technology that was spawned out of these early pioneer's efforts has become so pervasive in our everyday lives that it has been fascinating to take a look back at those times. Electronic Brains is an excellent non-fiction read for anybody because it is not bogged down in technical jargon and has wonderful resources at the back of the book for those wanting to do additional reading in the field. The length of the book is also very manageable. Highly recommended!
No comments:
Post a Comment