Customer Reviews

Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age

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This is the book that that spawned the PBS series "The Machine that Changed the World" airing in America around 1992. It was a five part series that closely matched this book, on which it was based. With this book you will gain an appreciation for the history of the modern computer and get an excellent historical perspective. The 5 part TV series with episodes taken from chapters of this book were titled:

1) Great Brains
2) Inventing the Future
3) The Paperback Computer
3) The Thinking Machine
4) The World At Your Fingertips

The book was written before the the invention of the internet and the world wide web, but you can see it coming. Industry giants such as the Alan Kay, Doug Lenat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Alan Touring, Robert Noyce, Charles Babbage, George Boole, Jon Von Neumann and many others are all mentioned and their contributions are put into a modern (for the day) perspective.

I would recommend this book to any student of computer science or computers as a hobby. Though the book is well over 15 years old, it has a timeless quality that takes you back to the beginning of the computer age and leads you gently into the modern era.

The Dream Machine provides a plethora of information to the reader. It gives specific detials of the evolution of the computer. Including: many people, companies (IBM, Remington Rand), the languages of programming, the personal computer and more...