If you understand the title, skip this book, there is nothing new here.
This is a scholarly work covering the beginning of punched cards for data to 1945. While it highlights American efforts, it also includes Great Britain, France, and Germany because these countries had significant involvement in the growth of punched card usage. It is boring (punched cards are boring, right?). It has a lot of details that you would expect in a scholarly work, along with appropriate citations.
IMHO scholarly works get that name because they are created by graduate students (or higher) and published by academics. That does not mean the author is a good scholar and I think that is the case here. First, there are too many typos in the book. Then, there are ancillary facts that are wrong. So the editing is very poor. My biggest complaint is that the author, when describing Germany's use of IBM equipment, lifted the carpet just a bit so he could sweep their use in advancing the holocaust under the rug. To make matters worse, the author mentioned several times that Vichy France was anti-semitic and may have used its systems to find victims.
My last comment about this book is the cover. There is a picture of some dude and and a retired woman allegedly holding her Social Security Check that is a punched-card. It is impossible to read the card at all. It is a terrible picture printed on silver foil. I think I have one of the few extant copies of this book and I would not part with it because it is so campy.
- Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
