Customer Reviews

Portraits In Silicon

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This book is a series of bibliographic essays on the people behind the computer revolution. The subjects range from hardware builders to software writers to those that expanded the uses of computers. If you are a computer enthusiast, a lover of history or just a fan of a good book, this is definite reading.

The book starts with a brief bio of Charles Babbage from the nineteenth century and then continues with twenty-seven twentieth century masterminds behind computer software, hardware, and business models. Each subject receives ten to twelve well-written pages by prolific journalist Robert Slater - Von Neumann and Shannon, Mauchly and Aiken, Shockley and Cray, Gates and Jobs, Backus and Knuth, and many others.

This book is for the serious reader, interested in the history of science and technology.

The book is part of my 900-volume library on science and technology, and I strongly recommend it. With the short chapters on each subject, the book would make a good gift - something to be carried in a brief case on long trips.

This is the choice when you need to know how the computer came possible.