[SIGCIS-Members] The Communicators

Thu Mar 17 15:39:59 PDT 2022

Hi:

As I recall it, in the mid-1950's the only books available in bookshops (in the UK) when I went looking for ones on computers were Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill's book on EDSAC, Bowden's Faster than Thought, Berkeley's Giant Brains or Machines that Think, and Richards' Arithmetic operations in digital computers.

Cheers

Brian Randell

—

School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/brianrandell.html

On 17/03/2022, 22:24, "Members on behalf of James Sumner" <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org on behalf of james.sumner at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

    In the UK: Douglas Hartree, and I'll add another recommendation for Vivian Bowden. 

    Hartree's definition of the electronic computer as an unprecedentedly fast but counterintuitively stupid problem-solving tool which could do nothing but follow instructions literally – which appears in his Nature paper, inaugural address, and various media sources around 1946 – may well have been the sole passage point for this characterisation into sources aimed at non-specialists in the UK. It was certainly picked up directly by Bowden, whose 1953 collection Faster Than Thought has also been mentioned in a couple of replies. FTT was the first book-length treatment of computers written (in part!) for non-specialist readers in the UK, and was also, judging from Bowden's correspondence, in surprisingly high demand in the USA. 

    I remember Brian Randell once mentioning that the revival of Charles Babbage's name and significance was, on his assessment, begun by Leslie Comrie, who transmitted it to Hartree, who transmitted it to Bowden. I suspect the same may be true of the standard "fast calculating tool" characterisation of computing machines more generally. Opposing this, of course, was the concept of the computer as capable of learning and creativity, as seeded by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper and followed up by Jack Good and Donald Michie. 

    Hope this helps!
    All best
    James

    On 17/03/2022 14:58, Evan Koblentz wrote:

    I’m interested in a new-to-me research angle: the people who changed computing by writing about it.

    Lovelace comes to mind. So do Vannevar Bush and Edmund Berkeley.

    1. Who else should I consider from prior to 1965? (I have the microcomputer generation covered.)
    2. Are there existing papers on this subject?

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