HP Forum Archive 20

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Interesting book Message #1 Posted by Don Shepherd on 5 Mar 2011, 3:35 a.m. I was looking at the obituary of John Backus, IBM employee who was the principal inventor of FORTRAN. He died in 2007, and his obituary mentioned the "Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC)". I google'd that and came across this scanned interesting book about the IBM Watson Laboratory. It provides a general description of this machine, which was programmed to display "see Thomas" upon a certain condition occurring. Lots of pictures. A very interesting look at computing's early years. Edited: 5 Mar 2011, 4:49 a.m.

Re: Interesting book Message #2 Posted by Bill (Smithville, NJ) on 5 Mar 2011, 7:04 a.m., in response to message #1 by Don Shepherd Don, Great find. I'm always interested in the early computing days. There another book on the same site: Computer - Bit Slices From a Life by Herbert R. J. Grosch It's too bad these are only in HTML format and not in one of the mobile e-readers formats. They would get a lot larger audience. I just got a Kindle and have loaded it up with many early computing/personal computing books. Currently reading "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sities Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer History". I'll have to spend a little more time on the site to see what other books/articles they have on history of computing. Thanks, Bill

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