Moose O'Malley's Software Valley Established : July 1996 Please bookmark this location only : http://move.to/moose

After seeing the TV series "Triumph of the Nerds" and reading Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely I was hungry for more. I loved watching this TV series, and I enjoyed reading the book, and I needed more - bad.

I found this book, Bit by Bit, by accident in my local library, and borrowed it. And, once I started reading this book I couldn't put it down until it was finished as well.

The book is far more wide reaching than Accidental Empires and charts the development of the Abacus, the great mechanical calculators, the development of various electronics components, the eventual development of the first fully-electronic stored program computer (the Manchester Mark I), the rise of IBM, the fall of many other companies, and the development of personal computers - the Altair, the Apple ][, and the PC.

As well as describing the milestones and inventions, the book also describes the inventors personalities, lives, and philosophies in great deal.

For instance, the book describes Babbage's back breaking work on his Difference Engine, and the politics involved on the project.

In the 1800's, all navigation was achieved with the use of tables that were hand calculated and hand written. One example described in the book was the French government commissioning a new set of tables for navigation because the previous set had too many errors (and too many ships and lives were being lost as a result). So, the French government commissioned new tables, and it took the full time work of 90 people 2 years to complete 2 handwritten copies of the tables. But, because the French Government feared that there might be errors in the tables (therefore making them liable for loses), the tables were never published !

In the 1820's Babbage started work on his Difference Engine - which was to be a machine to calculate the values for the various tables, and also stamp metal plates with the answers that could then be used to print to tables.

It was an extremely ambitious work, but the British Government put up 1,500 UK pounds (with the promise of more) to help Babbage develop his Difference Engine.

In those days, there were loads of strange laws. For example, if a you employed a tradesman and he developed tools during this work, then the tools were his to keep - even if he developed the tools with your materials, your tools, and while being paid by you !!!

This law dated back centuries and had black smiths and carpenters in mind. However, in Babbage's case, he had the misfortune to hire a rather jealous and nasty foreman who seemed hell bent on building up his own personal store of very expensive tools and lathes at Babbage's expense.

I believe that this is the most significant reason for Babbage not finishing his Difference Engine. After nearly a life-time of working on it, and costing more than 23,000 UK Pounds (which in the 1820's was a King's Ransom !!), the engine was still only about one quarter complete.

The book also discusses the development of the first mechanical calculators (Schickard's calculator in 1623, Pascal's calculator in 1644, etc), and the progression onto large mechanical calculators and programmable mechanical calculators.

IBM (formerly CTR) was an mechanical calculator company and almost completely missed out on the development of the electronic computer. At the time, IBM had a massive business leasing mechanical calculators and mechanical punch card machines to businesses, and did not want to change nor did IBM think it had to change with the advent of electronics.

But, eventually, after much debate among the senior management at IBM, Thomas Watson Jr finally demanded that IBM move into electronic computer development. At the time, IBM's competitors (NCR, Remington Rand, etc) stayed with mechanical calculating devices, and lost millions and/or went out of business.

The book covered up to developments of 1984/85, since the copy of the book I had was written in at this time.

It is this part of the book which joins up with Accidental Empires, and this book provides lots of additional information.

The book describes the friendship of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (which started in 1971), and the activities, schemes, and projects they got up to (some highly illegal - like selling Blue Boxes for getting free phone calls) before the formation of Apple Computer in 1975.

At the end, the book briefly describes the rise of the IBM PC - in the final 2 paragraphs !!

All in all, I found this book highly enjoyable, and it brought together information from many hundreds of sources to successfully plot the course of the development of the modern day computer.

Book Summary :

Name :	Bit by Bit, An Illustrated History of Computers
Author :	Stan Augarten
Number of Pages :	322 big pages (incl. 10 page Index)
Recommended Retail Price :	$9.95 US in 1985
First Published :	Unwin Paperbacks (Great Britain), 1985
ISBN Number :	0-04-001007-4

Moose's Rating : 9 / 10

The above review is Copyright © Moose O'Malley, 18-Mar-1997.

From Here you can :

Email me with comments etc...

---

This page is part of Moose's Software Valley

Please bookmark this location only : http://move.to/moose

---

You are Visitor since December 11, 2002.