Encyclopedia of Computers and Computer History

Kenneth Hudson pointed out back in 1983 that the industrial archaeology of computers was in danger of not being properly recorded. The producers of this book have taken the argument further. Just collecting examples of old equipment is not enough. A steam train engine looks spectacular, most people can understand the basic operating principles and engineers can still describe the whole process of heat and energy transfer that made steam engines viable. A grey plastic box with minimal moving parts tells you very little. The uses of computers, the programming languages, the operating systems and the application programmes are all...