Computers: The Life Story of a Technology

I found this book among a heap of depricated tech books my school library was giving away for free.



I liked it for the fact that it explains connections between events—such as how some machines inspired the creations of others. It reads like the computer history facts I’ve read online streamlined into a story. The content is organized by concept rather than by time, but paired with the timeline provided in the beginning of the book, it still makes sense. I also appreciate how the book begins with descriptions of early counting devices and mathematics, which I don’t usually see acknowledged as relevant to the origins of the computer.

With that said, I didn’t like how some disputed information, most notably Alan Turing’s ambiguous suicide, was presented without its full context. It lead me to wonder what other information in the book could be missing. However, this book was published in 2005, and as far as I know, the nature of Alan Turing’s death wasn’t disputed until it was called into question by Jack Copeland in 2012. So, I could let it go.

It should also be noted that, because this book is focused on computer history, it doesn’t provide ample detail on the adjacent topics it references. Additionally, the language is clunky at times, and, for a published book, there is an absurd amount of typos. Really, the most compelling thing about the book is that it organizes many events and ideas into a comprehensible sequence, and is a great pointer for topics to do additional reading on.

All in all, somewhat difficult to get through, but still pretty cool.