The Man Who Invented the Computer

Jane Smiley

ISBN 10: 0385527136 / ISBN 13: 9780385527132

Verlag: Doubleday, 2010

Beschreibung

Traces physics professor John Vincent Atanasoff's role in the invention of the computer, describing his innovative construction of an unpatented electronic device that eased the lives of burdened scientists by performing calculations using binary numbers. Piece(s) of the spine missing. Due to age and/or environmental conditions, the pages of this book have darkened. Former library book. Mylar protector included. Please note the image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 123786612

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: The Man Who Invented the Computer
• Verlag: Doubleday
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 0385527136
• ISBN-13: 9780385527132
• Einband: Hardcover
• Zustand: Good
• Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Very Good
• Buchtyp: Ex-Library

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

From one of our most acclaimed novelists, a David-and-Goliath biography for the digital age.

One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the Illinois–Iowa 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 don’t 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.

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

JANE SMILEY is the author of eleven novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Thousand Acres, and three works of nonfiction. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. Smiley lives in Northern California.

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.