[Chicago] Good readings on the history of computing

[Matt Bone]

+1 on the Stephenson article.

Not to keep filling this thread with quotes, but I love the line in it
where he's incredulous about the creation of Linux:

"For a long time I could not bring myself to take the notion
seriously. It was like hearing rumors that a group of model rocket
enthusiasts had created a completely functional Saturn V by exchanging
blueprints on the Net and mailing valves and flanges to each other."

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 9:50 AM, Daniel Fehrenbach
<dnfehrenbach at gmail.com> wrote:
> @Randy - I had Dr. Chuck as a professor at Michigan, hope that his Coursera
> stuff was as engaging as he is in person
>
> A lot softer than a lot of things mentioned previously but Neal Stephenson
> has a, really outdated but readable essay on operating system history as
> seen through his experience http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html.
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 9:39 AM, Randy Baxley <randy7771026 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> This makes me wish I had unlimited time and also had my young eyes back.
>>
>> I lived some very good pieces of all of this.
>>
>> I hate to keep recommending Dr-Chuck but his course on Coursera in
>> Internet History, Technology and Security is an enjoyable romp.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Jordan Bettis <jordanb at hafd.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 09/24/2013 02:40 PM, Jason Wirth wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> > Does anyone have suggestion for articles on the history of computing?
>>> >
>>> > Note, Python specific stuff would be great but it doesn't have to be
>>> > python specific, and almost by definition probably won't be.
>>> >
>>>
>>> I can recommend a few books that I've read:
>>>
>>> *Computing in the Middle Ages* by Servero M Ornstein
>>>
>>> This guy became a programmer on a drum memory machine, went to Lincoln
>>> Labs at MIT when they were building SAGE. He was part of the transition
>>> from Lincoln Labs to MITRE and worked on the TX-1. He then worked on
>>> LINC (Which became the PDP-8), went to BBN and worked on ArpaNet, then
>>> to Xerox PARC and worked on Alto.
>>>
>>> The book is a memorial of his career and what it was like working on the
>>> above projects.
>>>
>>> *Before the Computer* by James W Cortada
>>> *A History of Modern Computing* by Paul E Ceruzzi
>>>
>>> These are two academic treatments of the subject by academic historians.
>>> The first covers mechanical and electro-mechanical information
>>> processing from the invention of the cash register and type writer,
>>> through adding machines and ends with the creation of vacuum tube
>>> computers.
>>>
>>> The second begins with UNIVAC and ends with the invention of the Web.
>>>
>>> Like I said, they're academic treatments of the subject so fairly
>>> rigorously written.
>>>
>>> A final one I might hesitatingly recommend is:
>>>
>>> *The Universal History of Computing* by Georges Ifrah
>>>
>>> This was written in French and translated into English. The writing is
>>> quite dense and it goes off into the weeds at the end, which is why I
>>> hesitate to recommend it.
>>>
>>> But it begins with a discussion of numbering systems, and demonstrates
>>> how the positional numbering system was a precondition for even thinking
>>> about mathematics as something that could be done mechanically.
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>>
>>
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