This book was both a primer and a manifesto in its time. In language that managed the delicate trick of being exquisitely clear and uncompromisingly evangelistic, Berkeley described how a computer works, step by step, instruction by instruction. Employing numerous diagrams, and painstakingly explaining every underlying concept (like "binary" or "register" or "input/output") as if it had never been explained before, Berkeley demonstrated how it was possible to move digital information from one "place" to another -- and how a set of on/off switches, if wired correctly, could perform operations on that information, handling such extraordinary feats as the addition of two plus two.
Berkeley walked the walk. He built his own computer, Simon, considered by some historians to be the first "personal computer," and documented the process in a series of 13 articles for Radio Electronics magazine and also in this book. Simon was so simple and so small in fact that it could be built to fill up only four cubic feet, cost less than $1000, could be carried in one hand, and was expandable. It may seem that a simple model of a mechanical brain like Simon was of no great practical use. On the contrary, Simon had the same use in instruction as a set of simple chemical experiments had: to stimulate thinking and understanding, and to produce training and skill. By 1959, over 400 Simon plans had been sold. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants a very clear description of the world's first personal computer.
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