JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I was grazing in the warehouse and came upon this terrific volume: Mathematical Tables and Aids to Computation (volume 1&2, 1943-1947). It is the collection of the first two volumes of the world’s first journal devoted to the computer, with a big gap in publication caused of course by WWII. There are a number of gems in the 900-odd pages in this volume, including the following papers. (Note that all of the below and more are readable online from Utah at of the MTAC, here.)

• G. R. Stibitz “Should Automatic Computers be Large or Small?”
• 3 tight pages on the first appearance in English on the Zuse Z4 computer (1947, “This may be the earliest published description of Zuse’s early computers available to post-World-War-II researchers outside of Germany and Switzerland. See \cite{Ceruzzi:1981:ECK} in an histcomput.bib for many more details)”, 
• J. H. Curtiss “A Symposium of Large Scale Digital Calculating Machinery” (April 1947), 
• G. R. Stibitz “Film Slide Rule” (October 1947), 
•  L. J. C(omrie), “The Application of Commercial Calculating Machines to Scientific Computing” (April 1946), 
• H. H. Goldstine and Adele Goldstine “The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)” (July 1946), 
• R. C. A(rchibald) “Conference on Advanced Computation Techniques” (April 1946), 
• W. G. Bickley and N. W. McLachlan “Mathieu functions of integral order and their tabulation” (January 1946),  
• W. J. Eckert “Mathematical Tables on Punched Cards” (October 1945), 
• J. S. Frame “Machines for solving algebraic equations” (January 1945),

and more. See math.utah.edu for a very full and link-filled list of the papers.

• The volume is available for purchase int he blog’s bookstore, here.