The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
Language: English
Published by Doubleday, New York, 2010
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- New
Seller: funyettabooks, Bloomington, MN, U.S.A.funyettabooks
AbeBooks seller since March 21, 2005
Condition: New
£ 9.88
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
New. Very little shelfwear. The dust jacket is in new mylar. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.
Seller Inventory # 046988
- Title
- The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
- Author
- Smiley, Jane
- Publisher
- Doubleday, New York
- Publication year
- 2010
- Condition
- New
- Dust jacket
- New
- Book Type
- Biography, Computers
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0385527136
- ISBN 13
- 9780385527132
- Edition
- First Edition.
- Seller catalogs
- Biography, Science
One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the IllinoisIowa border, John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that the binary number system and electronic switches, combined with an array of capacitors on a moving drum to serve as memory, could yield a computing machine that would make his life and the lives of other similarly burdened scientists easier. Then he went back and built the machine. It worked. The whole world changed.
Why dont we know the name of John Atanasoff as well as we know those of Alan Turing and John von Neumann? Because he never patented the device, and because the developers of the far-better-known ENIAC almost certainly stole critical ideas from him. But in 1973 a court declared that the patent on that Sperry Rand device was invalid, opening the intellectual property gates to the computer revolution.
Jane Smiley tells the quintessentially American story of the child of immigrants John Atanasoff with technical clarity and narrative drive, making the race to develop digital computing as gripping as a real-life techno-thriller.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Jane Smiley is the author of fifteen works of fiction for adults and young adults, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning A THOUSAND ACRES, and four works of nonfiction. PRIVATE LIFE, her most recent adult novel, was published in 2010 to critical acclaim. Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001, she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 2006. She lives in northern California.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
funyettabooks
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AbeBooks seller since March 21, 2005
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