A History of Modern Computing, second edition (History of Computing)

Review of Ceruzzi’s "A history of modern computing" by Paul F. Ross Paul Ceruzzi, working from his position as Curator of Aerospace Electronics and Computing at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, writes a history of “the computer” as it is known today. He points to five “transitions” … … late 1940s, transition from specialized scientific instrument to commercialized product … late 1960s emergence of small systems … early 1970s arrival of personal computing … 1985 spread of networking … 1995 rise of the dot-coms and open-source softwareThe read is interesting and straightforward. It details “computers” as machinery, mechanical and electronic, covering the last seven decades or so. Ceruzzi understands correctly that the history of a____________________________________________________________________________________Ceruzzi, Paul E. "A history of modern computing" 2003, Second Edition, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, xiii + 445 pages____________________________________________________________________________________technology is not simply a listing of the technological details. It also is a report of the social and economic elements that influenced those details. Ceruzzi quotes Mark Twain (p 207) who said: “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.” This reader does not find Ceruzzi adding things that “did not happen at all” and applauds Ceruzzi for helping the reader see the connection between things that “did not happen at the right time.” This reader – :: – having used IBM punched cards and accounting machinery as a graduate student in the early 1950s to generate matrices of sums of squares and cross products on the way to calculating correlation matrices, reducing those sums to the correlation matrix using a Friden desk calculator … having declared in 1955 that he could not work far from a mainframe computer and a major university library … having carried punched cards to the computer room for processing by the IBM 702 at Prudential Insurance Company the following year … having supervised the development of software to generate statistics from responses to questionnaire items at Exxon in 1959 … having assisted a university in considering use of its newly purchased IBM 360 for budgeting and financial management in 1964 … having purchased his first IBM-clone personal computer (made by Olivetti for AT&T) in the 1980s … having programmed using the C language in the 1980s … having participated in computer-linked working teams at Digital Equipment Corporation in the late 1980s … having participated in widely dispersed (geographically speaking) professional teams at Texas Instruments in the 1990s … having joined the internet world from his desk at home in the 1990s … having purchased the computer being used to write this review by asking a computer vendor to assemble components (motherboard, CPU, power supply, disk storage, memory, optical drive, operating system, software features, I/O features, etc.) to my specifications – :: – feels like he’s lived the history Ceruzzi is describing. This reader lived in a Boston, Massachusetts suburb from 1965 to 1998 amidst people and places where important computing events were popping. Even in retirement, he finds himself living in a computing hotbed, his 1955 declaration having indeed been a course-setter for his career. This reader does very little work or participates in very little interaction with others in which his computer is not part of the action. Since IBM “big iron” dominated computing from the 1950s into the 1980s, I expected Ceruzzi’s history to be “all IBM.” Happily, it is not. He follows other developments in appropriate detail. It is a delightful read. Ceruzzi’s history has its missing elements. Living, computing, and reading in 2016, Ceruzzi’s history’s “closing date” of 2003 seems to be a long time ago. This reader having viewed the growth of the integrated circuit through reading a biography of Gordon Moore (Thackray et al, 2015) recently, the impact of the circuit printed on silicon seems almost to have been bypassed by Ceruzzi. “Bad guys” have learned to use computers and attack individual and organizational vulnerabilities with the necessary sprouting of countermeasures, and this part of computing history is missing. “Communicating,” “doing work,” and “having fun” are at the core of today’s computer applications and these central uses do not emerge from Ceruzzi’s history of manufacturers and model numbers. The important, almost dominating, role of software houses and their effects upon hardware architecture are not touched. Use of files accessible by internet as the world’s online library is not touched. Communicating is as much a part of using computers today as what happens within arm’s reach at one’s desk or on one’s portable device yet the impact of these demands upon the at-one’s-hand technology and telecommunicating technology and business is not touched. Digital photography came into being in the time period covered by this history and its effects upon “computer use” and communication content has been real. Ceruzzi does not include this facet of the new century’s use of computing technology. We learn almost nothing about Apple, Dell, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, AMD, Lenovo, Samsung, and the like. Reading Ceruzzi’s history is, indeed, satisfying. But it also leaves one with a hunger requiring much more before even for-the-time-being satisfaction is accomplished. I have several other histories in my “to be read” stack including Campbell-Kelly et al’s Computer: A history of the information machine (2014). See the list of references. Some of the references are in my “already read” stack.Bellevue, Washington7 May 2016Copyright © 2016 by Paul F. Ross All rights reserved.ReferencesCampbell-Kelly, Martin, Aspray, William, Ensmenger, Nathan, and Yost, Jeffrey R. Computer: A history of the information machine 2014, Westview Press, Boulder COCeruzzi, Paul E. A history of modern computing 2003, Second Edition, MIT Press, Cambridge MAColwell, Robert P. The Ptentium chronicles: The people, passion, and politics behind Intel’s landmark chips 2006, Wiley-Interscience, Hoboken NJGates, Bill The road ahead 1996, The Penguin Group, New York NYMalone, Michael S. The Intel trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove built the world’s most important company 2014, HarperCollins Publishers, New York NYReid, T. R. The chip: How two Americans invented the microchip and launched a revolution Second edition. 2001, Random House Trade Paperbacks, New York NYRifkin, Glenn and Harrar, George The ultimate entrepreneur: The story of Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment Corporation 1988, Contemporary Books, Chicago ILSchein, Edgar H. DEC is dead; Long live DEC: Lessons on innovation, technology, and the business gene – The lasting legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation 2003, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., San Francisco CASegaller, Stephen Nerds 2.0.1: A brief history of the internet 1999, TV Books, New York, NYThackray, Arnold, Brock, David C., and Jones, Rachel Moore’s Law: The life of Gordon Moore, Sillicon Valley’s quiet revolutionary 2015, Basic Books, New York NY

I really enjoyed this history of the computer industry - it provides insight into how programmers from previous eras would have perceived their tasks - running around with punch cards between different card readers, batch processing & sequential file access, the advent of time switching, the flicking of switches on the front of an Altair to set the register contents, & why a BIOS & a Disk Operating System were such a breakthrough.Some glaring omissions include leaving out the computer game industry and evolution of software engineering paradigms - not much on C++, OOP, components, SOA, etc - for this, Wikipedia is still the most useful source of info.One takeaway from this book is how rapidly a vendor can go from hero to zero - the recent upheaval of the emergence of tablets & smartphones and the decline of the desktop comes to mind.Your modern programmer is largely shielded from the intricacies of memory management and low level programming. In a way it documents the success of a bygone era: Computation has been commoditized for content consumption - the next generation will not have the concept exposure for DIY garage-style engineering.All in all, a good read.

I can't imagine how difficult it is to write a book on the history of computers. It is a history filled with filing cabinets and pocket protectors, pasty old white men and insurmountable bureaucracies, cantankerous spinning memory devices and giant cabinets of wires, and out of all that has come the digitally connected, globalized world in which we all reside. I came to this book looking for the A to B linear path from the invention of the transistor to my cell-phone, and although that isn't really what I found I can't say I was dissapointed. This book covers every step and deviation along the path of digital computing from the late 40's onward, and although it's a tough read at times, the picture it paints of the slow and steady acceleration of excitement and innovation in the design and implementation of computing devices is worth it.

This is a great book! It covers electronic computers from ENIAC through the early PCs. It has tons of information and for me, is fun to read (I like computer history).

I'm a Brazilian and my english is not perfect, sorry. Anyway the book is like the description sad "Like new". I was from a Library so it have some techinical stikers outsite but this don't mess with the reading. It is much better than i expected.

Yes.

Very good

Paul Ceruzi is a premier historian with the Smithsonian. To understand in some depth how we got here to this computer age this is the indispensable work. Ceruzi writes in a very readable style

Computers are a mainstay of todays societies and to imagine modern life without them is impossible. Reason enough to get some insight in their surprisingly short history.The author takes the reader from world war 2 based developments for decoding into the post war computer technology. With mainframes as central devices in the early years of computing, driven by customers in aerospace and military and later in space technology, computers were mainly used in engineering and science driven businesses. Since those customers, funded by tax payers money, were a solid basis for business, investment was worthwhile and besides hard science other customers were attracted. The computer became not only a machine for computing , but for data handling in general. Large airlines, banks etc. could make use of them as well.Software became a focus and smaller computers became attractive for businesses outside the field of science.Ceruzzi tells the history of the relevant companies (IBM, DEC etc) and also gives the appropriate amount of technical background. Development of the tranistor and the Integrated Circuit which soon made a computer on one "Chip" possible changed the business.This history of the people and companies involved, the role which small companies and hobbyists played in the development of the personal computer is really interesting.The limitations of certain technology for data storage and retrieving, the impact of new developments in the fields are impressive, especially when one things of todays Gigabyte RAM availability and massive, cheap available hard disk space which by standards 10 years ago might have seemed hard to believe. In the 70ties and 80ties that probably was unimaginable.What has been done to live with those limitations, how they were overcome and how networking became a focus is explained in the later part of the book. The author delivers information on technology, business and software were appropriate.An interesting, sometimes a tad bit too dry read, full of valuable technical and historical information, set in context with history and developments in society in general.

An interesting read. This book starts it's history in post war America, so it misses a lot of the pioneering work at Bletchley Park. Also the focus is firmly on the US and misses out on developments like the Commodore, Atari, Amiga, spectrum, Acorn computers. Also this book is pretty dated now so for stuff later than 2000 you'll need to look elsewhere. As such it is a bit weak on the Internet. But for a history of IBM and development of technologies for the later part of the 20th century it's strong and academically rigorous.

I'm still halfway through the book, but it is an interesting read, well-written and throughly researched.The only complaint I have, it doen't even mention the Amiga or other systems from the age- it is quite centered about business machines prior to the 80s and touches lightly on domestic computing.

Only read a section of the book and found it very interesting and well researched, full of facts and stories.Recommended!

Libro consigliato da un professore universitario. Risultato deludente perchè si sofferma troppo su aspetti meno rilevanti. Mantiene una suddivisione temporale ben fatta ma risulta comunque difficile da "studiare". Buono invece se acquistato per una semplice lettura.