Author : Charles J. Bashe
Publisher : Mit Press
Page : 735 pages
File Size : 37,90 MB
Release : 1985-12-03
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9780262523936
The challenges faced by IBM's research and development laboratories, the technological paths they chose, and how these choices affected the company and the computer industry.
Author : Emerson W. Pugh
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 860 pages
File Size : 17,29 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9780262161237
No product offering has had greater impact on the computer industry than the IBM System/360. This book describes the creation of this remarkable system and the developments it spawned, including its successor, System/370.
Author : Emerson W. Pugh
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 29,3 MB
Release : 2009-01-23
Category : Computers
ISBN : 0262307685
No company of the twentieth century achieved greater success and engendered more admiration, respect, envy, fear, and hatred than IBM. Building IBM tells the story of that company—how it was formed, how it grew, and how it shaped and dominated the information processing industry. Emerson Pugh presents substantial new material about the company in the period before 1945 as well as a new interpretation of the postwar era.Granted unrestricted access to IBM's archival records and with no constraints on the way he chose to treat the information they contained, Pugh dispels many widely held myths about IBM and its leaders and provides new insights on the origins and development of the computer industry.Pugh begins the story with Herman Hollerith's invention of punched-card machines used for tabulating the U.S. Census of 1890, showing how Hollerith's inventions and the business he established provided the primary basis for IBM. He tells why Hollerith merged his company in 1911 with two other companies to create the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which changed its name in 1924 to International Business Machines. Thomas J. Watson, who was hired in 1914 to manage the merged companies, exhibited remarkable technological insight and leadership—in addition to his widely heralded salesmanship—to build Hollerith's business into a virtual monopoly of the rapidly growing punched-card equipment business. The fascinating inside story of the transfer of authority from the senior Watson to his older son, Thomas J. Watson Jr., and the company's rapid domination of the computer industry occupy the latter half of the book. In two final chapters, Pugh examines conditions and events of the 1970s and 1980s and identifies the underlying causes of the severe probems IBM experienced in the 1990s.
Author : James W. Cortada
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 17,50 MB
Release : 2015-03-08
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1400872766
Before the Computer fully explores the data processing industry in the United States from its nineteenth-century inception down to the period when the computer became its primary tool. As James Cortada describes what was once called the "office appliance industry," he challenges our view of the digital computer as a revolutionary technology. Cortada interprets reliance on computers as a development within an important segment of the American economy that was earlier represented largely by such instruments as typewriters, tabulating machines, adding machines, and calculators. He also describes how many of the practices of the office appliance industry evolved into those of the computer world. Drawing on previously unavailable industry archives, the author adds to our understanding of IBM's early history and offers short corporate histories of firms that include NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand. Focusing on the United States but also including comparative material on Europe and Asia, Before the Computer will be a unique source of knowledge about the companies that built office equipment and their enormous impact on economic life. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author : Stephen H. Kaisler
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 19,8 MB
Release : 2018-11-30
Category : Computers
ISBN : 1527522636
This volume describes several different models of IBM computer systems, characterized by different data representations and instruction sets that strongly influenced computer system architecture in the 1950s and early 1960s. They focused on a common system architecture that allowed peripherals to be used on different systems, albeit with specific adapters. These systems were modular, which made them easy to manufacture, configure, and service. Computing with UNIVAC, they used reliable Williams Tubes for memory, and later introduced magnetic core memory. IBM developed its own magnetic tape drives and magnetic drums that were both faster and more reliable than UNIVAC’s peripherals. The first software systems that could reasonably be called “operating systems” enabled more efficient use of programmer time and system resources. The development of programming languages, notably FORTRAN, and assembly language processors, notably Autocoder, improved the productivity of programmers. In addition, IBM developed one of the finest product marketing, sales and servicing organizations in the world. The legacy of the IBM 700 series is found in their popular successors, the IBM 7000 Series, which will be described in a forthcoming volume.
Author : Paul E. Ceruzzi
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 468 pages
File Size : 29,97 MB
Release : 2003-04-08
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780262532037
From the first digital computer to the dot-com crash—a story of individuals, institutions, and the forces that led to a series of dramatic transformations. This engaging history covers modern computing from the development of the first electronic digital computer through the dot-com crash. The author concentrates on five key moments of transition: the transformation of the computer in the late 1940s from a specialized scientific instrument to a commercial product; the emergence of small systems in the late 1960s; the beginning of personal computing in the 1970s; the spread of networking after 1985; and, in a chapter written for this edition, the period 1995-2001. The new material focuses on the Microsoft antitrust suit, the rise and fall of the dot-coms, and the advent of open source software, particularly Linux. Within the chronological narrative, the book traces several overlapping threads: the evolution of the computer's internal design; the effect of economic trends and the Cold War; the long-term role of IBM as a player and as a target for upstart entrepreneurs; the growth of software from a hidden element to a major character in the story of computing; and the recurring issue of the place of information and computing in a democratic society. The focus is on the United States (though Europe and Japan enter the story at crucial points), on computing per se rather than on applications such as artificial intelligence, and on systems that were sold commercially and installed in quantities.
Author : Meryle Secrest
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 35,81 MB
Release : 2019
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0451493656
The human, business, design, engineering, cold war, and tech story of how the Olivetti company's first desktop computer, the P101, came to be. Within eighteen months it had caught up with, and surpassed, IBM, the American giant that had become an arm of the American government. Secrest tells how Olivetti made inroads into the US market in 1959 by taking control of Underwood of Hartford CT as an assembly plant for Olivetti's own typewriters and future miniaturized personal computers. Within a week of the purchase, the US government filed an antitrust suit to try to stop it. In 1960 Adriano Olivetti died suddenly of a heart attack; eighteen months later the young engineer who had assembled Olivetti's team of electronic engineers was killed in a suspicious car crash. The Olivetti company and the P101 came to an insidious and shocking end. -- adapted from jacket
Author : Robert X. Cringely
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 386 pages
File Size : 45,4 MB
Release : 1996-09-13
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0887308554
Computer manufacturing is--after cars, energy production and illegal drugs--the largest industry in the world, and it's one of the last great success stories in American business. Accidental Empires is the trenchant, vastly readable history of that industry, focusing as much on the astoundingly odd personalities at its core--Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, etc. and the hacker culture they spawned as it does on the remarkable technology they created. Cringely reveals the manias and foibles of these men (they are always men) with deadpan hilarity and cogently demonstrates how their neuroses have shaped the computer business. But Cringely gives us much more than high-tech voyeurism and insider gossip. From the birth of the transistor to the mid-life crisis of the computer industry, he spins a sweeping, uniquely American saga of creativity and ego that is at once uproarious, shocking and inspiring.
Author : Martin Campbell-Kelly
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 28,57 MB
Release : 2023-06-19
Category : History
ISBN : 1000878759
This volume provides a history of the computer which now comes properly up to the ubiquitous age, with new chapters that look at globalization, platformitization and regulation, allowing readers to engage with the more recent takeover by computers in their historical perspective. With the growing ubiquity of computers, the subject is one of interest to many students and this will feature in history of science and technology courses, and world history courses as well as ones specifically on computing. Books on the history of computing tend to be quite technically or business focused, this covers the social and cultural history as well.
Author : Emerson W. Pugh
Publisher : MIT Press (MA)
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 16,60 MB
Release : 2000-04-01
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9780262661676
