JF Ptak Science Books Post 2368
It is worth reporting on these two perhaps-forgotten (outside of the specialty area) classics in the early history of computation. The first was written by a powerhouse married team of Andrew and Kathleen (Britten) Booth—Andrew was the inventor of the magnetic drum memory and the Booth multiplication algorithm, and Kathleen was the creator of the first assembly language, for starters).
The book was a superior effort and was a survey of the state of computation via digital computer for the Post WWII-1953 era. The 17 chapters are geared mainly as an instructional--an advanced "how to", if you will, with plenty of diagrams and illustrations. After a few historical chapters, we have: the overall design of a computing system; the control; the arithmetic unit; miscellaneous operations; input-output; gates; single digit storage; miscellaneous components, storage devices. From this point on, from p136-196, the book deals primarily with programming issues: definitions of a code and discussion of its form and controls (!), pp 136-151; the techniques of coding; the use of subroutines in coding; program design; some applications of computing machinery.
I should also point out that the very tight, compacted bibliography section (occupying pp 217-226) is particularly useful, for on pp 219-222 is found a sub-bibliography arranged by computer name, identifying 37 different computers (the Zuse computers for example would comprise just "one" computer).
The Booths' book is a fine companion to the earlier work by C.B. Tompkins' High-Speed Computing Devices,published in New York City by McGraw-Hill in 1950. This is one of the best of the pre-1960 textbooks on the computer, complete with an enormous amount of data on the Golden Age of computers. It is a classic work enhanced by a (very) unusually complete series of chapter-ending references and bibliographies. Among much else of interest there is a treatment of the Harvard Mark I and II on pp 183-187 in the chapter on "Large-Scale Digital Computing Systems" on pp 182-222 with bibliography occupying pp 218-222. Also, the "Punched-Card Computing Systems" chapter pp 146-181 has a splendid bibliography on pp 166-181.
Notes on the Tompkins book:
“This is considered to be the first textbook on digital computers, the first compendium in English on digital computer technology, and a pioneering work that influenced many computer designers during the 1950s. It provides an unsurpassed picture of the state of the art during the late 1940s, and is further enhanced by the inclusion of several excellent bibliographies.” -- Sarrazin F2.
"The book is a careful analysis of the electronic field as of 1950 and was in very large measure written by the late Professor C. B. Tompkins.." - Herman Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, p 315.
“It was written to satisfy "a perceived need, following the end of WW II, for compendium of technologies applicable to the emerging field of electronic digital computers...Because published technical information was scarce in the U.S., there can be little question that the book was an important contribution to computer literature...with its state of the art picture of the period 1947 through 1949, establishes a well-documented baseline fro tracking and evaluating subsequent technological progress." Arnold Cohen, from the Introduction to the 1983 Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series Edition of the ERA Report, published by Tomash Publshing. ERA
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