Customer Reviews

Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors

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The very first sentence of this book is "This book is about people, not machines". Well, that's fine for me, but I find it difficult to apprehend what these people have done without a minimum of information about the machines. By this, I mean more than just enumerating the size, weight and number of components of each machine! The big flaw in this this book is the lack of (clear) description of what each individual cited has brought to the development of computers. For example, describing the post WWII period, the author states "Turing's design was that far ahead of everyone else's. Even von Neumann's machine lacked some of the sophistication of Turing's, which has had a profound influence on the fastest and largest of modern computers.(footnote 4 p212)" Unfortunately, there is not a single word explaining what this design was, or the influence it had! The author prefers spending time explaining that "(Von Neumann) enjoyed sex, for the pleasure of it, but without emotional involvement.(p 179)"... Another example: the chapter on "flip-flops" is utterly unintelligible if you have not read the excellent book "CODE - The hidden language of computer hardware and software" by Charles Petzold. In summary, I am very disappointed by this book, I would rather recommend anyone to read Petzold's one!

I have read over 50 books on the subject of computers in the last year (I am a computer trainer), and the book I put at the very top of this list is Joel Shurkin's Engines of the Mind. The book is a look at the early development of computers, and contains particularly fascinating portraits of Charles Babbage, Herman Hollerith, Eckert and Mauchly, and John von Neumann. It is an excellent history of computers from Babbage to the 1960s; my understanding is that it was not the author's intent to address PCs in the book. I usually recommend this book to people along with Robert Cringeley's Accidental Empires -- Shurkin's book as the "pre-PC" book, and Cringeley's as the "post-PC" book. Shurkin's book is extremely well written, and well worth reading.

This book really covers the history of computer engineering from 1945-1965, between the first practical computer, and IBM's dominance.

It does give a good insight into the extensive history and heritage of the first real computers, the UNIVACs. It's easy these days to be fooled into feeling that history begins around 1969 with UNIX, and this book is helpful in illuminating the "Dark Ages".

The preamble sections about Babbage, and about computing prehistory, are interesting too, but a little disconnected from the later stuff (as indeed they were, historically).

However, I have a couple of complaints. Firstly, the book is in desperate need of a thorough proof-reading: the technical details have mostly been relegated to footnotes, but are frequently wrong in obvious ways, or consist of unhelpful analogies, and give the impression that the author has little scientific knowledge. The final chapter repeats, verbatim, sections of earlier ones, and is clearly tacked on (for a better coverage of the 70s-80s, read Steven Levy's "Hackers").

Secondly, there is very little computer science history in the book: no reference to Post, Turing (except as an engineer) or Church, or to their work of the 30s. (Read Andrew Hodges' "Turing..." for this); nor serious technical discussions of the subject matter covered. There is also no mention anywhere of FORTRAN or Lisp which were critical innovations occuring in the late 50s, the same timeframe as this book.

I guess "the History of UNIVAC" wouldn't have been such a catchy title.

I recently read this book and "Computer : A History of the Information Machine" (The Sloan Technology Series) by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray(Contributor). Between the two books you get a fairly thorough treatment of the events that led to the modern computer and the historical development of these machines. "Engines of the Mind" is much more focused on the people that are behind the story, and less focused on the businesses and theory of computing that those individuals helped advance.

Mr. Shurkin starts his novel at the beginning, quite literally, walking through early usage of numbers and counting through the development of modern numbers. Anyone familiar with early history will recognize the tale, although some interesting insights are provided. He then walks us through a fairly detailed treatment of Charles Babbage, and even describes fairly well the theory behind the development of his Difference Engine. We are then walked through the development of punch card machines to aid the US in post Civil War censuses, which leads to Hollerith's founding Tabulating Machine Co. which would become IBM. Shurkin focuses on the individuals that developed these main frames, so we then spend some time on ENIAC and its many offspring. Here the author starts to diverge into a somewhat personal discussion of who was the "real" founder of the mainframe, and thus the computer. The author does a good job of saying he does not believe Von Neumann's claims to be this father, and that Atanasoff's claims appear fictitious as well. Regardless of who 'wins' this argument, it would have been nice to know more of the author's own background in order to understand whether or how he was biased. The book wraps up with the development of Microsoft and Apple, but again focuses more on the backgrounds of their charasmatic leaders rather than the business forces that led those companies to their prominence.

The story is told logically and does a good job of letting the reader peek at the character of those people who were instrumental in the development of the computer. However, it would have been nice to see more of the overall environment in which these decisions were made. I believe that this book, combined with Campbell-Kelly and Aspray's book do a good job of telling the whole story regarding the development of the PC (neither focus much on theory), it would be wrong to read just one of them. I recommend this book, however, I would read the other text first.

Shurkin begins his book "This book is about people, not machines" and he delivers. Mauchly, Eckert, Atanasoff, Berry, Goldstein and von Neumann all but come alive. But, the machines are not neglected. We see how hard it actually was to create what our time takes for granted. The history of the computer feels much less neglected because of this book.

The ability to work with large numbers quickly and accurately evolved slowly, as the need required and society and science advanced. Shurkin traces the development of mechanical computation more through the people involved rather than the machines they built.

When Galileo "married mathematics to the physical sciences" it underscored the gap that existed between "scientists' need to understand natural phenomena and their ability to perform the mathematics necessary for that understanding."(28)

The slide rule and the abacus worked well enough in business and general applications until more complicated statistical analysis of populations, taxes, the weather, targeting, and astronomy were required. Charles Babbage had an idea for a Differences Engine which would be able to perform multiple calculations. More significantly, his Analytic Engine, was "nothing less than the modern computer"(53) with a memory, a CPU, algorithms, and punch cards. While Babbage never seemed to be able to complete a project, he was nonetheless insightful.

Herman Hollerith used punch cards on his tallying machines for the US census. His Tabulating Machine company was taken over by Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) which in 1924 became International Business Machines (IBM).

Presper Eckert, John Mauchly, John Atanasoff, and John von Neumann all contributed to building the ENIAC at the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania during WWII, but who, Shurkin asks, built the first computer? He sifts through the conflicting claims and concludes that Eckert and Mauchly, rather than Atanasoff or von Neumann, deserve the credit. Eckert and Mauchly "devised the first general-purpose computer, one that could conceivably find uses beyond the laboratory."(297)

Shurkin writes "a revolution was on its way that would alter not only the nature of business, but also the nature of modern life."(300) The transistor and integrated circuits permitted computers to be made smaller, but the real advance came from micro-processors the "brains" of a computer, or Central processing unit (CPU). A new world opened up; mechanical devices replaced electronic ones. More significantly, new activities and processes evolve every day. The rapidity is astonishing and has profound questions for society.

The rapidity of communications and information have spawned a secondary revolution in industry. No longer is manufacturing the backbone of the American economy, but it is the processing of information. The social implications are profound as well, affecting all aspects of our lives. The distinction between home and office is blurred; email is quicker and more flexible than "snail mail."

Interestingly Shurkin finds that "oddly, it is hard to find anyone who thinks the result will be malevolent, "(319) but how we adapt is an open question. "The age of the machine is gone; the age of the computer is here."(320)

Harking back to Galileo,for the first time in history the gap between science and technology has closed.

This book is merely an appetizer -- and a lukewarm one at that -- for the great, yet-to-be-written history of thinking machines. How else to explain a final chapter that says, in effect, "Oh yes ... a whole lot has happened since the mid-'60s. Guys like Gates and Jobs and Wozniak did some revolutionary stuff. The end.'' The end should have been prefigured in the beginning. The Information Explosion should have been making its first, tentative rumbles while the writer was still describing the clicking of abacus beads. Worst of all, the trip from counting sticks to Macintoshes is accomplished without a single diagram. What was INSIDE that wonderful ENIAC? How exactly does a computer work? How about core memory? Magnetic storage? Where is ARPANet and the Internet? How does a computer WORK? The last question is the worst betrayal: The book tempts the reader with the drama of how thinking people made thinking machines. Midway, it gets stuck in a subplot about who has the best claim to parenthood of the computer. And after that, it's a very weak business story about IBM's fall and Microsoft's rise, all written with adjectives ("the greatest business failure") substituting for narrative and insight. The reader is left, still wondering, with a counting stick in his hand, on the outside of that beige computer cabinet ... looking in

An excellent history of the computer and those individuals who were instumental in developing their ideas which led to the construction of ENIAC in 1946 to the present desktops we use today. Primarily focused on ENIAC's developers, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchley, the story of their struggle, both technically and legally, is told with clarity and sense of suspense as each chapter unfolds. Consider this book an indispensable volume of how we have arrived at where we are in the current computer/internet/information age.

This outstanding book concisely describes the early years of computing, the personalities involved, and the various external influences impacting the evolution of the art. As noted in other remarks, the focus is on the critical nascent period of the late 1940's through the mid-1960's; microprocessor/desktop development are placed in context but generally left to other works.

If limited to a single text on this period, this book would be my unconditional choice. Few other authors synopses impart the excitement of the Moore School as this daunting task is undertaken.

Recently I read a few books on John von Neumann, I don't see myself as an expert, but I do have some knowledge. Therefore: You can tell a good book from a not so good one by checking, whether the details are right or not!