The Computer: An Illustrated History From its Origins to the Present Day Hardcover – March 5, 2013

My Dad is THE biggest computer geek, and he loved this book! He actually owned a lot of the computers featured in here at one time or another. Would highly recommend for that nerd in you life!

Bought this for a gift. Came very quickly

Informative and easy to read. I like the history of computers but there's not many books on this. Wish there was more.

Great overview on computer history !... This book is definitely not the ultimate reference for computer history in terms of tech details, but it is an awesome compilation of images that meet the purpose to get you over the progress of technology... The pictures are where the real value is of the book, and even thought the little detail in terms of historical facts (and maybe even some imprecisions) this piece is a valuable add to any vintage computer enthusiast collection.

Great fun. The story is always interesting; the photos enjoyable. No more need be said. I give it 4 stars.

ok, kind of boring , doesn't get going till the latter chapters , once computers became smaller and memory became bigger.

This book was featured in a bookstore a couple of weeks agoso I picked it up to have a look.Three minutes was enough. In that time I saw two errors anddidn't think it was worth further attention.Those two errors were:p. 103 "Every IBM 701 came with a copy of the FortranCompiler and ..."Not only is this statement false but Fortran wasnever implemented on the 701 which was both toosmall (memory) and lacked hardware floating pointarithmetic.Fortran was introduced on the 701's successor machinethe IBM 704 which remedied both these deficiences.p. 138 "Visicalc, the first computer spreadsheet ..." is alsofalse. The first computer spreadsheet that I had anyexperience with was BACAIC (yes, it's pronounced like"backache") which stood for Boeing Aircraft Co. AlgebraicInterpretive Computer. This was on the IBM 701 in the middleto late 1950s. Later the Naval Electronics Laboratory producedan Open Source spreadsheet program written in Fortran whichmade it less machine dependent but since the numerical analysisunderlying its algorithms was based on the 36 bit word formatof the IBM 700/7000 systems its portability was still limited.As far as I know, Visicalc was the first commercially availablespreadsheet program for personal computers.Historical Note: I believe that the first commercially produced personalcomputer belonged to Prof. Harry Huskey of U. C. Berkeley who received itas a fee for designing it. It was a Bendix G15 and looked like an oversizedgreen refrigerator.In case it is helpful in evaluating the review, I was a 701 programmer beginningin 1956.

In our modern world, the presence of computers is everywhere and the rate of progress in the technology is blindingly fast. It is with a book like this that one can take a quick look at the amazing amount of progress in computing technology.The book itself is mainly an illustrative look at computers rather than one information-heavy. The pictures and photographs that fill this book make it a pleasure just to thumb through. The whole history of computers is shown, starting in the beginning days with large, analog calculators and then into digital technology to our modern world of laptops and iPhones. How computers are used is also shown from applications in areas such as science, military, entertainment, and communications.This book seems to be targeted for the very casual reader and does not offer much hard information. It makes a great coffee table book.In conclusion, this is a beautifully illustrated look at the history of computers for the average reader.