[Read by Timothy Andres Pabon] In this concise, accessible account, Ceruzzi guides us through computing history, from ENIAC and UNIVAC to the smart phone and social networking. The history of computing could be told as the story of hardware and software, or the story of the Internet, or the story of ''smart'' hand-held devices, with subplots involving IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter. In this concise and accessible account of the invention and development of digital technology, computer historian Paul Ceruzzi offers a broader and more useful perspective. He identifies four major threads that run throughout all of computing's technological development: digitization -- the coding of information, computation, and control in binary form, ones and zeros; the convergence of multiple streams of techniques, devices, and machines, yielding more than the sum of their parts; the steady advance of electronic technology, as characterized famously by Moore's Law; and the human-machine interface. Ceruzzi guides us through computing history, telling how a Bell Labs mathematician coined the word digital in 1942 (to describe a high-speed method of calculating used in anti-aircraft devices), and recounting the development of the punch card (for use in the 1890 US Census). He describes the ENIAC, built for scientific and military applications; the UNIVAC, the first general purpose computer; and ARPANET, the Internet's precursor. Ceruzzi's account traces the world-changing evolution of the computer from a room-size ensemble of machinery to a ''minicomputer'' to a desktop computer to a pocket-sized smart phone. He describes the development of the silicon chip, which could store ever-increasing amounts of data and enabled ever-decreasing device size. He visits that hotbed of innovation, Silicon Valley, and brings the story up to the present with the Internet, the World Wide Web, and social networking.

Computing: A Concise History (MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series)

Business & Money

Paul E. Ceruzzi

Industries

Gildan Audio and Blackstone Audio

A brief story of computing tells the events that occurred to develop the symbiotic relationship we have with computers. This story approaches four fundamental points: digital paradigm, which is the binary language on which computer science is based; the convergence of different technological systems with individual contexts that combined originate computing (it narrates the scientific development for the creation of the first computers); the relationship between technological innovation and the history of humankind, and what links us nowadays with computers.

Breve historia de la computación (Breviarios / Brief History, 595) (Spanish Edition)

Computers & Technology

History & Culture

FONDO DE CULTURA ECONOMICA*

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Books by Paul E. Ceruzzi