[Air-L] History of Computers

[Thomas Ball]

Hi-
   Not having followed this thread thoroughly, the following suggestions
may be redundant with what has already been shared. Thank you to Charles
Ess for providing a succinct summary of the posts. It was reassuring wrt
the depth of the responses that, e.g., Derek J. de Sola Price's discovery
of the 2,000+ year old Antikythera computer as well as the abacus were both
in the mix.

   On the off chance that these notes are fresh news, here are a few
additional comments:

- As much as anything, the history of computers is bound up with the
history of mathematics and, in particular, the history of mathematical
notation. Marcus du Sautoy's BBC documentary four-part series, *The Story
of Maths*, provides an accessible, excellent overview of this history. For
instance, among his first observations is that the Egyptians figured out
binary numbers thousands of years before Leibniz. Then there's the history
and origins of the number zero. But there's much more to his doc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJbChZrXDJE

- Somewhat more academic in its history of mathematical notation but
interesting nonetheless is Robin Wilson's book,* Euler’s Pioneering
Equation: 'The Most Beautiful Theorem in Mathematics'. *Wilson tells the
backstory of each of the five constants in Euler's equation and, in so
doing, develops a thorough history of mathematical notation. He summarizes
his book in this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VL2fl1_wB8


- Another interesting factoid is that, as its been argued, the history of
network theory began in 1736 with Leonhard Euler's *Seven Bridges of
Konigsberg* problem which laid the foundations for graph theory and
topology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg

- Here's a video on the history of the Internet from someone who was there
from the beginning:
https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2019-02-05/history-internet

- Werner Herzog's idiosyncratic 2016 documentary film, *Lo and Behold:
Reveries of the Connected World*, is a film artist's existential take on
the history of the Internet. While all too easily dismissed, it has unique
footage of the Stanford lab where the first peer-to-peer connection was
made between computers way back in the dark ages of the 60s and 70s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_and_Behold,_Reveries_of_the_Connected_World


Hope this helps,
Thomas Ball


On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 7:57 AM Jane Gruning <jane.gru at gmail.com> wrote:

> Speaking of Douglas Englebart, for that part of the history of computing I
> really enjoyed sociologist Theirry Bardini's excellent biography of
> Englebart, *Bootstrapping - *although I probably wouldn't have attempted to
> cover it in a 200-level class when I was teaching, so apologies to Adriana
> for further hijacking the thread! But maybe it would be of interest to
> others on the list. Particularly interesting for its coverage of the many
> different input devices that Englebart invented (chord keyset etc.) and for
> discussions of how computer users were "invented."
>
> On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 3:10 AM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess at media.uio.no>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > this has been a really interesting thread to watch unfold (as usual):
> > I've very much appreciated the various suggestions to the original query
> > and now have a much richer reading list than before.
> >
> > Perhaps more of an aside - and certainly beyond the remit of the
> > original query, but if I were teaching such a course, I think I'd also
> > want to include (which would also likely bump it up a bit in the
> > academic curriculum?):
> >
> > 0) the proviso that my first hands-on computer was an analogue computer
> > (sometime in the early 1960s) and as someone deeply immersed in
> > mathematics and astronomy - and so my original senses of computers and
> > computation is prior to and somewhat independent of the now predominant
> > "digital" branch (there's still the analogue in there, but let's save
> > that little story for another rainy day).
> >
> > 1) a look at the Sky-disk of Nebra - no moving parts, but at least as
> > some astronomers have interpreted it, a "device" for coordinating the
> > agricultural planting / harvesting seasons by way of keeping track of
> > the lunar vs. solar cycles and marking the summer and winter solstices;
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk
> >
> > 2) some information about the discovery and various contemporary (lego /
> > 3d printed) recreations of the antikythera mechanism (ca. 2100 years
> > old), a quite sophisticated analogue computer in the earlier senses;
> > (lots of good material online, including some fascinating videos on how
> > contemporary mathematicians and engineers have made replicas)
> >
> > 3) Something about the dreams of calculation from mathematician /
> > philosophers such as Leibniz and Kepler - in order to
> > culturally-historically locate much of the motivation for the
> > development of such devices as grounded in the Pythagorean dream /
> > "religion" of understanding numbers and numerical relations as the truth
> > of the universe - a truth with urgently salvific significance as this
> > knowledge would then allow us to properly attune our lives to "the
> > harmony of the spheres" and thereby attain some sort of "mind-meld"
> > therewith ("God," in a non-theistic sense, for Aristotle and perhaps
> > Plato);
> > [another aside: while Kepler completed the musical notation for the
> > harmony of spheres based on his new-found mathematical model of the
> > solar system as based on elliptical rather than circular orbits - it was
> > only in the 1970s with the advent of electronic computers and
> > synthesizers that the music could be "played".  I'm astonished that this
> > realization of the 2600-year-old Pythagorean dream is not much more well
> > known?]
> >
> > 4) the contributions of Douglas Engelbart, famous for screen-based
> > interfaces and "the mouse" - again, for the sake of locating at least
> > some portion of more contemporary motives in highly humanistic (if not
> > forthrightly "classical," as in "3" above) approaches to computation as
> > human augmentation and the broader "liberation technology" sensibilities
> > of the 1960s-1980s (Stuart Brand et al.) -
> > but more originally rooted in the Romantic-Enlightenment coalescensces
> > documented by Mark Coeckelbergh in his _New Romantic Cyborgs_ (MIT,
> 2017).
> >
> > Not for the sake of Adriana de Souza e Silva's fortunate undergraduates
> > but perhaps for the sake of a more expansive approach to the history of
> > computing - what am I missing still?
> >
> > again, many thanks and all best,
> > - charles ess
> >
> > On 22/03/2019 20:11, Adriana de Souza e Silva wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I’m looking for a text (book, article, a few chapters) that tells the
> > history of computers, starting from Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace’s
> > Analytical Engine to present days. This is for a 200-level undergraduate
> > class, so I’m trying to summarize the topic as much as possible, to give
> > students a general overview in a couple of classes.
> > >
> > > Any suggestions?
> > > _________________________
> > > Adriana de Souza e Silva
> > > University Faculty Scholar
> > > Professor
> > > Department of Communication
> > > http://www.souzaesilva.com
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> >
> > --
> > Professor in Media Studies
> > Department of Media and Communication
> > University of Oslo
> > <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
> >
> > Postboks 1093
> > Blindern 0317
> > Oslo, Norway
> > c.m.ess at media.uio.no
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