Odd book

Mark Matlock mark at matlockfamily.com
Wed May 6 14:22:28 CDT 2020


> From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
> Subject: Odd book
> Message-ID: <20200506152915.23EA118C0AA at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
> 
> So, I've come across an odd book that might interest some here: "Achieving
> Accuray: A Legacy of Computers and Missiles", by Marshall William McMurray.
> 
> The first couple of chapters merely re-tell the story of earliest computers
> (pre-elecronic and electronic), up through the IBM 701, Elliott 401, NCR 304,
> SAGE, CDC 6600, IBM 7090, etc. Competent, but nothing special. Then it
> gets interesting, though.
….
> A very unusual and off-beat work.
> 
>  Noel

Noel,
   Thanks for the book recommendation above. I was happy to see that it was available in a reasonably priced Kindle version.
One of my favorite computer history books is Stan Augarten's 1984 book, Bit by Bit: An Illustrated History of Computers.

    I did manage to find a copy and really enjoyed reading it and looking at the great photos in it. I was curious to know
a bit more about the author and in “DuckDuckGoing” him I ran across an online college course by Haverford University:

http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/bitbybit/bit-by-bit-contents/front-matter/table-of-contents/ <http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/bitbybit/bit-by-bit-contents/front-matter/table-of-contents/>

    that has the entire text and the photos from Stan Augarten’s book. It is a great way to read an otherwise hard to find
book. It also has some .pdfs of the lecture slides from the professors who put this great web site together.

Mark


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