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Behind every great man, there's a great woman; no other adage more aptly describes the relationship between Charles Babbage, the man credited with thinking up the concept of the programmable computer, and mathematician Ada Lovelace, whose contributions, according to Essinger, proved indispensable to Babbage's invention. The Analytical Engine was a series of cogwheels, gear-shafts, camshafts, and power transmission rods controlled by a punch-card system based on the Jacquard loom. Lovelace, the o...

This book, aimed at general readers, covers the entirety of computing history from antiquity to the present, placing the story of computing into the broader context of politics, economics, society, and more. Computers dominate the world we live in, and this book describes how we got here. The Computer: A Brief History of the Machine That Changed the World covers topics from early efforts at mathematical computation back in ancient times, such as the abacus and the Antikythera device, through Ba...

This unique book presents the story of the pioneering manufacturing company Ferranti Ltd. - producer of the first commercially-available computers - and of the nine end-user organisations who purchased these machines with government help in the period 1951 to 1957. The text presents personal reminiscences from many of the diverse engineers, programmers and marketing staff who contributed to this important episode in the emergence of modern computers, further illustrated by numerous historical ph...

“If you want to know about AI, read this book…It shows how a supposedly futuristic reverence for Artificial Intelligence retards progress when it denigrates our most irreplaceable resource for any future progress: our own human intelligence.”—Peter ThielA cutting-edge AI researcher and tech entrepreneur debunks the fantasy that superintelligence is just a few clicks away—and argues that this myth is not just wrong, it’s actively blocking innovation and distorting our ability to make the crucial...

This volume investigates how major corporations, such as Microsoft, Borland, Apple, Eastman Dodak, and Silicon Graphics, address usability issues. It presents case studies of each organization, outlining their program structures, program goals, and team members' responsibilities and resources. The book also addresses how usability is marketed inside the organization and to customers, as well as the lessons learned during the course of product development efforts. Each illustrated study includes...

The book presents the life and works of one of Germany's most famous computer scientists, Carl Adam Petri. It is written in a vivid and entertaining manner, providing an in-depth discussion of the background behind Petri's best-known contribution to computer science, the Petri net. In this way the book can be read as a first introduction to nets, but it also covers the theoretical, physical and philosophical foundations behind nets, thus facilitating a comprehensive understanding of the wider ra...

At last - the secrets of Bletchley Park's powerful codebreaking computers. This is a history of Colossus, the world's first fully-functioning electronic digital computer. Colossus was used during the Second World War at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, where it played an invaluable role cracking enemy codes. Until very recently, much about the Colossus machine was shrouded in secrecy, largely because the codes that were employed remained in use by the British security se...

The Plot to Get Bill Gates brings a fresh perspective to the avaricious, bloodthirsty behaviour of business icons and to the personality of Bill Gates himself. The result is a funny morality play about big business at the century''s end.'

Engineering Communism is the fascinating story of Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, dedicated Communists and members of the Rosenberg spy ring, who stole information from the United States during World War II, that proved crucial to building the first advanced weapons systems in the USSR. On the brink of arrest, they escaped with KGB's help and eluded American intelligence for decades. Based on extensive interviews with Barr and new archival evidence, Steve Usdin explains why Barr and Sarant became s...

Durante la II guerra mondiale hanno avuto luogo numerosi risultati di rilievo nel campo della crittografia militare. Uno dei meno conosciuti e quello usato dal servizio di intelligence svedese, nei confronti del codice tedesco per le comunicazioni strategiche con i comandi dei paesi occupati nel nord Europa, le cui linee passavano per la Svezia. In tal modo, durante la fase piu critica della guerra la direzione politica e militare svedese era in grado di seguire i piani e le disposizioni dei Ted...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The official book behind the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This New York Times-bestselling biography of the founder of computer science, wit...

Japan is about to overtake America to become the world leader in information technology. This book tells the remarkable story of how the Japanese did it - and reveals the techniques Japanese companies have used to displace American and European manufacturers from this critically-important industry. The vast majority of VCRs, laptop computers, photocopiers and faxes we buy today have been manufactured in Japan. They join the transistor, the colour television, the microwave oven, the microchip and...

On the morning of Monday, April 3, 2000, Josh Harris woke to the knowledge that he was about to lose everything. Harris, the man Time magazine called 'The Warhol of the Web was reduced to the role of helpless spectator as the Nasdaq index collapsed like a house of cards, and his personal fortune dwindled from 85 million dollars...to 70 million...to 20... to nothing. If the mania attending the last six months of 1999 is hard to completely recall, it's because when the crash came the events, dre...

A Hollywood biopic about the life of computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (1906--1992) would go like this: a young professor abandons the ivy-covered walls of academia to serve her country in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and finds herself on the front lines of the computer revolution. She works hard to succeed in the all-male computer industry, is almost brought down by personal problems but survives them, and ends her career as a celebrated elder stateswoman of computing, a heroine to thousands,...

AI Knowledge Transfer from the University to Society: Applications in High-Impact Sectors brings together examples from the "Innovative Ecosystem with Artificial Intelligence for Andalusia 2025" project at the University of Seville, a series of sub-projects composed of research groups and different institutions or companies that explore the use of Artificial Intelligence in a variety of high-impact sectors to lead innovation and assist in decision-making. Key Features Includes chapters on heal...