Despite working in the tech field for just about 15 years now, I have to admit I really don’t know about the inventor(s) of the computer. I know a good amount about the invention of the personal computer, the Internet, and most modern software concepts. However, the computer itself not so much.
So this book turned out to be very interesting to me. A couple of the names did ring a bell once I heard them, but I learned so much of the early concepts that led to the invention of the computer.
I don’t think I can ever explain just how genius of a concept it was to base it off of the binary system. I can’t imagine how someone could have thought of going that route, when it’s a system that is rarely used in any field that I’m aware of. It’s simply genius, and I will always be amazed by it’s choice. It’s really amazing how it works and how flexible it turned out to be. Amazing.
While the book started a bit slowly for me, once World War II hit is where it really picked up. As horrible an event WWII was, the innovation that came out of the war efforts is astonishing. Not the weapons, and aircraft advances, but the need to compute for those advances that led to the computer.
Though I’ve read about it, I still have a hard to believing how those early computers were developed using the technology that was available at the time. For instance, vacuum tubes to store an on or off value? That’s insane to me, yet it worked! A very interesting read.