Book Description
The Computer traces the evolution of this vital machine from its earliest roots through its exciting application in code-breaking during the Second World War, and from its initial use in the workplace and home to its current status as a totally indispensable part of twenty-first century life. Along the way the author examines some colorful moments in the computer's development, from the key battle between Apple and IBM in the 1980s, to the use of computers in film and television such as the 1950s film The Forbidden Planet. The speed at which computer technology is progressing is staggering, and the final chapter looks forward to a time when computers will be on our wrists, in our cars ? and possibly in our bodies.
Customer Reviews:
The Comuter: An Illustrated History.......2007-04-02
When I first opened the package that contained this book, I was absolutely amazed. I knew the book would be fairly big and that it was a hardcover. I knew it was about computers. I didn't expect it to be so artfully done. The cover is immediately striking and at about 4 lbs., this is a lot of book!
The Computer is an overview of the history of computing, from tabulation sticks which appeared 35,000 years ago straight through to a few years in the future. Mark Frauenfelder has compiled a massive collection of interesting pictures, wonderful historical tidbits and a solid background in what makes computers what they are - from ancient, gear driven devices to the dense microprocessors of today.
The Computer is comprised of a four page introduction and 10 chapters, concluding with an index.
Digital Dawn looks at the rise of computation, from ancient man to the counting machines of the 19th century.
Machines Learn to Remember looks at the genesis of computer memory, from external devices to punch cards.
Sparks of an Idea shows the beginning of vacuum tube technology, IBM and other binary processors.
Computers go to War looks at the Enigma Machine, Turing and others who helped to break codes, guide artillery and eventually track satellites.
Getting Down to Business starts with the invention of the transistor and ends with the first commercial leases of computers to corporations.
Getting Personal, as you might guess, covers the birth of the personal computer. The electronics clubs of the late 60's and early 70's give way to Xerox fumbling the ball which Apple and later Microsoft picked up and ran with.
Game On traces the history of computer gaming from the earliest mainframe games to home gaming consoles and persistent, massive multiplayer role playing games.
Jacking In brings us through the birth of the Internet and the World Wide Web with stops for email and cybersex. Also featured are a few other start ups you may have heard about, from Linux to Google.
Let me Entertain You shows us the computer's effect on the silver screen - for better and for worse, as well as the rise of the digital music player and peer to peer sharing.
The World of Tomorrow looks towards the future, focusing on robotics, personal computing shrinking to wearable levels and of course, nanotech.
This book is the kind of book I love to get my hands on. Give me a good technology book or a good history book and I'm happy. Chock it full of amazing and hard to find pictures, bits of trivia and quotes from the great minds featured in the book and I'm in heaven.
Even though this book is heavy, I took it to bed with me the first night I had gotten it just to finish it. My arms were tired but my mind was happy by the time I finally hit the index, sometime early yesterday morning.
The early mechanical computation devices are fascinating to look at, whether in plans like Davinci's or constructed like Babbage's machines, they invoke a sort of post-modern, steam punk feel. Except these were the real deal and not a SciFi author's fancy. I was fascinated pouring over the pictures and descriptions of differential machines and tabulators.
I really perked up however once the book hit the early 40's. Seeing over the course of a few hours reading how technology changed so rapidly over such a short amount of time - pretty much from the day my Dad was born until this moment, it's amazing. In less than one lifetime we've gone from clunky, vacuum tube driven behemoths to the razor sharp, tiny computers of today. If you've read any of my previous thoughts on where we're headed, you'll know I think that this is just the beginning! To see this all in detailed photos and descriptions. To live through the heady days of Apple, Atari, IBM PCs and Microsoft once again is very cool.
It's easy to tell that Frauenfelder loves this stuff even more than I do. He's put a lot of time and effort into crafting a book that I'm eagerly putting on my coffee table. I know that my friends and colleagues will head right for it when they come over!
If you're into big, artsy books about the history of computing, well you won't find one much better than The Computer. Cover to cover it is a fascinating read full of wonderful pictures. Even if this isn't your thing, if you know someone who adores the history of computers as much as the computers themselves, this book will be a welcome addition to their collection.
Book Description
In this lavishly illustrated full-color retrospective, discover never-before-seen photos that bring to life the people and stories behind the most popular games of all time, including Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, SimCity, Quake, Myst, Tomb Raider, and more. This is the inside scoop on the history, successes, tricks, and even failures of the entire electronic games industry.
Customer Reviews:
Cool.......2007-04-28
This is a very cool book, lots of fun to read and browse. High quality glossy paper and tons of pictures. Highly recommended.
Very comprehensive.......2007-04-26
I've been designing games for a while now and started programming them. This book was a good book to reference games to see what I could and couldn't program.
As for the actual content of the book... the author makes the material interesting. His organization of the book could have been better. It goes in chronological order (most of the time). The visual design of the book is outstanding. The appendix in the back is good.
Its a great book for the most part.
This book is so awesome.......2007-03-19
I learned SO much about the video game industry. I wasn't all that interest in video game history at first. I was looking at this book for nostalgia purposes. I was reading a friends copy and I got hooked. Luckily, I found it used on Amazon.
If you think you'd be remotely interested, buy this book!
Absolutely terrific! A must read for videogame fans........2006-11-29
An amazing and comprehensive picturebook of all electronic games through history (not just "video" games). This book has some great photos of consoles and game prototypes you may have never heard about -- like the Atari Game Brain and Cosmos. It's just packed with images on thick glossy paper. My only complaints is there were no images of the very first videogame, "Tennis for Two". The book is also so thick and heavy, I don't know how long the binding will last under multiple readings. But these are minor gripes. A must have if you are interested in the beginnings of electronic entertainment.
Amazing Book!.......2006-03-11
It's a very colorful book, full of information and ilustrations. I am argentinian and I understand it all perfectly. Very recomendable!
Book Description
"...overflowing with color screenshots, package art, reproductions of old game ads, shots of old machines, and photos of collectibles. Every picture triggers another memory, and before long you're awash in blissful recollections..."--Computer Gaming World, August '02
"...300+ pages offer a visually compelling record of the origins and development of electronic entertainment, so buy it for the pictures of rare game boxes and screens... it's a great nostalgia trip for old-timers and a primer on the industry's storied past for the less ancient reader."--Computer Games, August '02
From pinball to PlayStation, this photo-packed volume chronicles the history of electronic games--which has become both a billion dollar industry as well as a cultural phenomenon. Featuring hundreds of interviews with game creators and thousands of never-before-seen photos from the early days, this book honors the games that have captivated youngsters and the young-at-heart for more than 30 years--making this the ultimate tribute to electronic games.
Customer Reviews:
Almost great.......2005-05-08
The book itself is good, but the binding fell apart not to long after purchasing it (and i'm not rough with my books at all). To pay (...) dollers for a book it seems as though you should at least get a decent binding!
Memories, So Many Memories!.......2003-10-28
This book will take you back. I flicked through this book and the memories kept flooding back. I had completely forgotten about a lot of these games until seeing their pictures in this book. I remember being a little kid in the 80's and playing Paperboy, Pac Man, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Frogger, Leisure Suit Larry, California Games, Railroad Tycoon, Maniac Mansion, Wings and It Came from the Desert. I had a Commodore Amiga 500. Other kids had Commodore 64's or the Atari and all those games are in this book too
This book has a lot of the games from the 80's and the 90's. I wasn't still playing games in the 90's but I recognise a lot of the titles. Not every single game is in here but there are a lot and the reminiscing you will do is worth the price of this book alone. This book is an excellent conversation starter as well.
The companies that made the games and the game machines are in here in detail as well as well as the history of games over the two decades. There is a lot of information in this book. You have to read it if you played these games in the past.
Good for the coffee table, not for the true game fan.......2003-06-29
The Bottom Line: This is a nice coffee table book to spark some discussion, but true gaming fans and players will be dissapointed with this version of gaming history.
My own, personal dissatisfaction with this book comes from the lack of coverage of the 2D fighter genre, which was kicked off in the early 1990's with Street Fighter 2. This one game single-handedly revitalized and recreated the arcade market, which had been strugling since around 1983. It forever shifted some primary design philosophies, most importantly, from competing against a computer AI to competing against human opponents (which is the main draw to just about every online game in existence today).
In a sense, it was a retro-evolution back to games like Pong and what made those games so much fun.
To put it another way, games were designed with the idea that humans would be competing against each other as a primary design element. Therefore, issues such as balance, cheating, and competition took on new meanings. These factors had to be developed within the framework of highly complex games, not simple games like Pong.
The impact of this game cannot be overstated, but the authors devote a whopping 1-page to this landmark game and say little about the genre (and the hundreds of games) that came after and are still being made today. That's simply inexcusable. Street Fighter, alone, has about 30 sequels in various incarnations.
The vast majority of 1990's section is devoted to PC gaming and profiles of PC Gaming companies (because the PC finally began to become a powerful enough machine that it could deliver graphics and sound that had broad market appeal).
Very little is ever said about the shifting gaming cultural landscape that occured between cosoles, home computers, and Arcades but that sort of thing, to a true gamer, is as important as the demise of Saturday morning cartoons when cable got big.
In short, with the exception of the early history section, this book reads more like a catalog of games organized by release date and accompanied with a screen or box shot. It fails to actually comment intelligently on the subject itself.
The Book aging game nuts have waited for!.......2003-04-23
....
This book may seem a little pricey, but it's worth it. It covers an incredible amount of information (albeit not in the depth some might want)-But the thing that allows it to rise above in my opinion is the high quality, HUGE range of photographs, some very rare. As games are a visual medium, this is important to me. Home games or arcade games, both are covered well, and the beautiful layout will have you returning to this book again and again.
The 'Ultimate Guide to video games' (Also available) goes into greater details, but has very few photos-I prefer this, but I would recommend both to any game fan, as both are excellent, and together they make a fantastic companion set.
What I was looking for.....a sum of my youth............2003-03-28
Well...that's what I was looking for...a complete sum of history of videogames in a cool book..without the need to buy a 3000 pages encyclopedia.
I'm a 36 year old guy..I had a VCS 2600 , Intellivision and other consoles..and was a teenage arcades fan, and I found in this book all the glittering past that I still recall. Many photos, many particulars, stories, adds and much more materials than I could believe. The book is the right size, it's HEAVY and it has a great "touch" feeling..
You cannot miss this book if you were mad for arcades and consoles. And if you still recall it...you still are mad for that ! :-)
Recommended for nostalgics like me...and keep it aside your pac man original arcade in the living room..to astonish better your friends :-)
Average customer rating:
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The Making of an Engineer: An Illustrated History of Engineering Education in the United States and Canada
Lawrence P. Grayson
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
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| Books
Education
| Engineering
| Professional & Technical
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History of Technology
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| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
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ASIN: 0471597996 |
Book Description
Celebrates the 100th anniversary of the American Society for Engineering Education with a pictorial history. Includes 350 photographs from the archives of major engineering schools to document an authoritative account of the growth and development of engineering education in America.
Book Description
The history and evolution of the fields of science and medicine are symbiotically linked and thus are mutually dependent. Discoveries in one domain have allowed for progress in the other, and it is nearly impossible to study one area in isolation. The influence of science and technologic discoveries on medicine has profoundly impacted the way physicians practice and has resulted in an extended life expectancy and quality of life that our ancestors never dreamed possible. Science and Technology in Medicine is a collection of 99 essays based on landmark publications that have appeared in the medical literature over the past 500 years. Each essay includes a summary of the article or chapter; text and images reproduced directly from the original source; a short biography of the author(s); and a discussion about the significance of the discovery and its subsequent influence on later developments. Original material by the likes of Dürer, Bernoulli, Doppler, Pasteur, Trendelenburg, Curie and Röntgen offers readers a rare glimpse at publications housed in archives around the world, beautifully reproduced in one fascinating volume.
Customer Reviews:
Nice to read, insightful and greatly illustrated.......2007-02-13
The book is great. a great part of it is devoted to precomputers. I mean, calculating machines. But nevertheless it is very enjoyable. You'll learn a lot from it. The photographs are very nice. And there are lots of them: there is no single pair of pages without a photograph. The style is careful, and well organized. There are plenty of data and curious facts about the history of computers.
Highly recommended. It is a pity you can find it only in the second hand market.
A Excellant Addition.......2004-07-20
Aside from only briefly mentioning Englands EDSAC (as is the case with most non English accounts), this was a nice and entertaining read. Not only detailing the Computers themselves but the inventers, designers, craftsmen, and engineers of the machines. Technical enough to keep those who want it content, but written understandably for those who may not be so technically inclined.
Insightful look into the history of computers.......2000-10-29
Without a doubt one of the best books on the history of computers that I've ever read. The author tells not only the story of the machines themselves, but also of the people who built them and why they followed the paths they did.
The photos and illustrations really bring the story to life; now you can actually see what these machines and people looked like!
Besides an Illustrated History, an Enjoyable One.......1999-12-22
A good source of data for those who want to know how the Industry of Computers began. If you want to understand why the Computer Science changed the world, and if you'd like to speak as an expert in all those fantastic words of the luckiest people on the 50's, 60's, 70's and even the 80's who had the opportunity to grow and deal with this technology, and feel how these people had to accept new windows-know-it-all-users with little or none at all knowledge about programming and other related training and long-time-consuming-hard-to-learn skills, you must read this book. Then, I'm sure, you'll know what I mean.
Besides an Illustrated History, an Enjoyable One.......1999-12-22
A good source of data for those who want to know how the Industry of Computers began. If you want to understand why the Computer Science changed the world, and if you'd like to speak as an expert in all those fantastic words of the luckiest people on the 50's, 60's, 70's and even the 80's who had the opportunity to grow and deal with this technology, and feel how these people had to accept new windows-know-it-all-users with little or none at all knowledge about programming and other related training and long-time-consuming-hard-to-learn skills, you must read this book. Then, I'm sure, you'll know what I mean.
Book Description
The incredible shrinking computer
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons"
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
Remember your first computer? No doubt it now seems like a relic from the Flintstone era. From automated punch-card calculators to the first personal computers such as the Apple II and Commodore 64, to today's Sony Vaios and PowerBook G4s, the computer has undergone an amazing, rapid evolution in its brief history. Can you believe the computer's first input device was a light pen used to select a symbol on the screen? And that computer keyboards were preceded by teletypewriters? The progress we've witnessed in our lifetimes is mind-boggling. The struggle for the best interface, the greatest design, and the fastest processor have resulted in computers of a size, power, capability and use that were unfathomable only a few decades ago.
Discover the fascinating history of computers, interfaces, and computer design in this illustrated guide that includes pictures of nearly every computer ever made, an informative text describing the computer's evolution up to the present day, and an A-Z index of the most influential computer firms.
**special horizontal format, laptop-style
Customer Reviews:
An Excellent Book....for what it IS........2007-05-22
As with other Taschen books I've seen, this book is more high style photo essay on the rise of the computer age than a hard core "history". When viewed as a photo essay or cultural documentary of a particular subject (computers, in this case), it is very successful...and a bargain. Most other computer history books are mainly text and often lack photographs of early systems, particularly the early mainframes and minis. This book is packed with lavish photos well organized by computer type (mainframes, minicomputers, micros, etc.) While errors are unacceptable in any book, I feel the other negative reviews of this book are way too harsh, and probably result more from expectations being incorrectly set by the book's title. For a highly detailed history of the subject, readers should look elsewhere. But for a beautiful and rare look at the early systems, this book will be a welcome addition to your library. Or, have the best of both worlds....get a thorough history book for the details and facts, and this book to see what things looked like!
Nice to read and very well illustrated.......2007-02-13
The book is easy to read. It has great illustrations. It is not an in-depth reading. If you want more information, you can look at Ceruzzi's (without illustrations), or, even better, Augarten's book. Augarten has done a great research effort. His books is enjoyable, and has lots of photographs. On the other hand, he begins his history from primitive calculators.
Wurster's book has very good hardback binding, and uses high quality gloss paper inside. I would redommend it for the price.
So Many Errors I Threw it in the Garbage.......2007-02-13
There are so many factual errors in this book that I simply threw the book in the garbage.
Fun for reminiscing.......2005-04-29
I first started working on both mainframes and personal computers in the 1970s, and have worked on a wide variety of machines.
The book has a number of errors, but is a wonderful buy for those of us who grew up with computers. It generally follows the right flow of creation, but is so superficial that there are errors. Those people looking to learn about the history of computers should avoid this. However, those of you looking to take a walk down memory lane will love the book and its pictures.
If you know the real stories, the pictures bring back lots of fun memories. If you don't know the real story, get some other books, you won't understand the pictures and the text isn't good enough.
Entertaining book on a usually dry topic, great photos!.......2004-09-30
Most books on the history of computing are dry treatises without a lot of good illustrations, but this one is different. More of an art book than serious history (see the other reviews) it presents the history of computing with a wonderful collection of large color illustrations, such as fantastic close-up shots of Engelbart's original mouse from 1968, hilariously weird UNIVAC ads from the '50s, rare & hard to find screen shots of early applications, as well as images from popular culture that reflected the computing mentality of the era. There are better books for the facts, but not many in league with this one for pure style.
Customer Reviews:
An interesting overview of the Vikings........1996-08-06
The book covers a little of every thing, the viking culturegods and myths, and important vikings, not to forget somehistory. It is full of many colorful illustrations. It does not go into alot of detail.
Average customer rating:
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Illustrated Chronology and Index
Manufacturer: Time Life
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
History
| Business & Culture
| Computers & Internet
| Subjects
| Books
Computer Dictionaries
| Introductory & Beginning
| Programming
| Computers & Internet
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0809460718 |
Books:
- The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers (O'Reilly Digital Studio)
- The Data Warehouse Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Dimensional Data Warehouses
- The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling (Second Edition)
- The Real ACT Prep Guide (The only guide to include 3 Real ACT tests)
- The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece
- The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
- USB Mass Storage: Designing and Programming Devices and Embedded Hosts
- Web Server Administration
- Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed (WPF) (Unleashed)
- Wireless Home Networking For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
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