It Began with Babbage

It Began with Babbage PDF Author: Subrata Dasgupta
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199309418
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A complete and accessible history of computer science, beginning with Charles Babbage in 1819.

It Began with Babbage

It Began with Babbage PDF Author: Subrata Dasgupta
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199309418
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A complete and accessible history of computer science, beginning with Charles Babbage in 1819.

It Began with Babbage

It Began with Babbage PDF Author: Subrata Dasgupta
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199309426
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
As a field, computer science occupies a unique scientific space, in that its subject matter can exist in both physical and abstract realms. An artifact such as software is both tangible and not, and must be classified as something in between, or "liminal." The study and production of liminal artifacts allows for creative possibilities that are, and have been, possible only in computer science. In It Began with Babbage, computer scientist and writer Subrata Dasgupta examines the distinct history of computer science in terms of its creative innovations, reaching back to Charles Babbage in 1819. Since all artifacts of computer science are conceived with a use in mind, the computer scientist is not concerned with the natural laws that govern disciplines like physics or chemistry; instead, the field is more concerned with the concept of purpose. This requirement lends itself to a type of creative thinking that, as Dasgupta shows us, has exhibited itself throughout the history of computer science. More than any other, computer science is the science of the artificial, and has a unique history to accompany its unique focus. The book traces a path from Babbage's Difference Engine in the early 19th century to the end of the 1960s by when a new academic discipline named "computer science" had come into being. Along the way we meet characters like Babbage and Ada Lovelace, Turing and von Neumann, Shannon and Chomsky, and a host of other people from a variety of backgrounds who collectively created this new science of the artificial. And in the end, we see how and why computer science acquired a nature and history all of its own.

The Difference Engine

The Difference Engine PDF Author: Doron Swade
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
"Drawing on previously unused archival material, The Difference Engine is a tale of both Babbage's nineteenth-century quest to build a calculating engine and its twentieth-century sequel. For in 1991, Babbage's vision was finally realized, at least in part, by the completion at the Science Museum in London of the first full-sized Babbage engine, finished in time for the 200th anniversary of Babbage's birth. The two quests are mutually illuminating and are recounted here by the then Curator of Computing, Doron Swade - one of the main protagonists of the successful resumption of Babbage's extraordinary work."--BOOK JACKET.

A New Kind of Science

A New Kind of Science PDF Author: Stephen Wolfram
Publisher: Wolfram Media
ISBN: 9781579550257
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1193

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Book Description
NOW IN PAPERBACK"€"Starting from a collection of simple computer experiments"€"illustrated in the book by striking computer graphics"€"Stephen Wolfram shows how their unexpected results force a whole new way of looking at the operation of our universe.

Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage PDF Author: Neil Champion
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
ISBN: 9781575723679
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
Examines the life and contributions of the English mathematician and inventor, whose work with calculating machines caused him to be called the father of the modern computer.

Inventors of Computer Technology

Inventors of Computer Technology PDF Author: Heather S. Morrison
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1502606550
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Throughout the course of history, there have been many inventions that have changed the ways societies function, propelling them into a new era. Computers and other corresponding technologies are relatively new inventions, but they have greatly influenced the way modern societies operate. This book gives insight into the most influential inventors of computer technology and the ways in which their inventions contributed to advancing humanity.

C. S. Lewis and the Inklings

C. S. Lewis and the Inklings PDF Author: Jason Fisher
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443882968
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This is a unique collection of two of the Inklings and their literary associates’ views on the negative impacts of technology in various areas of life and the resolution of these impacts through fellowship with others and faith in the Creator. Some of these essays offer suggestions on how ensnarement by social media and surrender to modern technology can be countered by surrender to God. Other essays also demonstrate how the significant literary craft of these authors can enchant readers and invite them into fairylands from which they return empowered and with a keener spiritual vision to tackle universal and present concerns.

Babbage's Calculating Engines

Babbage's Calculating Engines PDF Author: Henry Prevost Babbage
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Calculators
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description


The Second Age of Computer Science

The Second Age of Computer Science PDF Author: Subrata Dasgupta
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019084387X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
By the end of the 1960s, a new discipline named computer science had come into being. A new scientific paradigm--the 'computational paradigm'--was in place, suggesting that computer science had reached a certain level of maturity. Yet as a science it was still precociously young. New forces, some technological, some socio-economic, some cognitive impinged upon it, the outcome of which was that new kinds of computational problems arose over the next two decades. Indeed, by the beginning of the 1990's the structure of the computational paradigm looked markedly different in many important respects from how it was at the end of the 1960s. Author Subrata Dasgupta named the two decades from 1970 to 1990 as the second age of computer science to distinguish it from the preceding genesis of the science and the age of the Internet/World Wide Web that followed. This book describes the evolution of computer science in this second age in the form of seven overlapping, intermingling, parallel histories that unfold concurrently in the course of the two decades. Certain themes characteristic of this second age thread through this narrative: the desire for a genuine science of computing; the realization that computing is as much a human experience as it is a technological one; the search for a unified theory of intelligence spanning machines and mind; the desire to liberate the computational mind from the shackles of sequentiality; and, most ambitiously, a quest to subvert the very core of the computational paradigm itself. We see how the computer scientists of the second age address these desires and challenges, in what manner they succeed or fail and how, along the way, the shape of computational paradigm was altered. And to complete this history, the author asks and seeks to answer the question of how computer science shows evidence of progress over the course of its second age.

Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage

Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Late Charles Babbage PDF Author: Erwin Tomash
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780262515252
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Written but never published during his lifetime, this memoir of the founding father of computing is an indispensable primary source of information about Babbage's personal character and work. It brings to light his astonishingly wide range of interests, from mathematics to political economy and social reform, and dispels the myth of an "irascible" and "eccentric" personality, helping to clarify Babbage's position in the history of science.Buxton's memoir was written between 1872 and 1880 and is volume 13 in the Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing.