Title: Defining Relationships Among Computers, People, and Information
Abstract: This chapter describes how computer developers used existing documents, such as operation manuals and design proposals, to share information about innovations in computer design in the years immediately after World War II, before there were textbooks or formal curricula in a professional field of computer science. This documentary approach to information sharing was especially important for people working in the computer field that was being established in southern California to support the aircraft industry and guided missile development. Foundational documents are detailed: a 1945 report on relay computers written by George Stibitz for the US Army, John von Neumann’s 1946 “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” Claude Shannon’s 1948 Bell Labs report entitled “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” and Warren Weaver’s 1949 elaboration on this work, and Edmund Berkeley’s 1949 Giant Brains or Machines that Think, which is often considered to be the first book on computers for popular audiences.
Publication Year: 2021
Publication Date: 2021-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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