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This book delivers exactly what its title promises: a straightforward and comprehensive account of the electronic digital computer's first five decades. Starting with the historic ENIAC of 1945, Ceruzzi moves nimbly through one epochal generation of computing technology after another: the gargantuan, vacuum-tube-filled mainframes of the early '50s; the sleeker, transistorized minicomputers of the '60s; the personal computers conjured up by hobbyists in the '70s; and the computer networks that have come to span offices and the globe in the last 10 years.
Ceruzzi places all of these developments in the context of the social phenomena that shaped them: the imperatives of Cold War research, the evolving needs of information-swamped businesses, and the quirks and dreams of counter-cultural computer hackers. But unlike some popular books about computing history, this one refuses to acknowledge any particular individual, group, or institution as its protagonist. The tale it tells is complex: a weave of high-level projects, lowbrow tinkerings, and sweeping socioeconomic transformations, with a crash course in the basics of computer architecture tossed in for good measure. The mix doesn't make for great drama, but it does offer something perhaps more valuable--the sober, subtle feel of real history unfolding. --Julian Dibbell
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
A curator at the National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian) and historian of technology (Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age) offers a coherent yet thorough history of the computer. Ceruzzi begins in 1945 and ends in 1995, concentrating on commercial systems in the U.S. The story proceeds chronologically, tracing the evolution and repeated redefinition of what we understand by the word "computer." Starting with background to the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer, an early stored-program device introduced in 1951), Ceruzzi tracks developments in substantial detail, from early commercial computing to mainframes, the growing role of software, minicomputers, the subsequent movement to personal computing and, finally, the emergence of networking. The account does not require a background in computer science and is loaded with explanations about the origins of particular devices and functions (e.g., disk drives, RAM) as well as famous machines, internal architectures and histories of momentous companies (e.g., IBM, DEC). Ceruzzi sustains an interesting and manageable level of complexity, but his book is somewhat hobbled by a dry style and occasionally turgid elaborations that might better have been relegated to the extensive annotations. 51 illustrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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