Customer Reviews

The Timetable of Computers: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Computers

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I learned a lot by going through all the "milestones" in this book. Unfortunately, there are a few errors. I was surprised to read that Dr. Spencer teaches computer science, as his explanations of some technical notions were a bit off the mark; perhaps this is just his attempt at making the material accessible to the "uninitiated". The book was not carefully checked for typos, duplicate information, and even events that appear in more than one year!

However, I still enjoyed reading the book. It did help me put some things in perspective. This might be a good on-line project, so that the reader could filter the time line to only include new machine introductions, or salaries, or computer company revenues, or processor speeds, or whatever.

The book has 368 pages, almost entirely dates and three or four-line descriptions of key computer development events, plus frequent photos and illustrations.

I bought this for my reference library since I write occasional articles on the history of technology in my consulting practice. It serves as a very useful reference, but very few would choose to read through the book.