Request: Books/articles about history of early computing (pre 1950)

[pier4r]

Given my explorations so far, I learned the following (hopefully I will add link later)

- Computing did not "exploded" mostly during and after WW2 as I thought before (how much knowledge I missed and I still miss. Online museums are great); a great deal of tools where operational to make computations faster and less error prone already before.

A branch where computation was needed a lot, although not necessarily for complicated formulas but rather for the sheer amount of data to process - naive me, I never considered it - was accounting for banks, governments and bureocracy of various types.

So it seems that devices for mass computations were:
- mathematical tables (I still remember them shipped with books in 2000)
- slide rules (from ~1650 to: until pocket calculators were available en masse)
- tabulating machines (with punch cards) for massive basic operations.
- desktop mechanical calculators, mostly models with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division . I am not (yet) aware of mass produced models with more functions (aside from a square root function and a memory register in few models).
A couple of links:
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/m...hotos.html
http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/links.html
- actually electronic computers were ultra expensive, so very few institutions could buy them.
- electronical desktop calculators, available in the first half of 1960, were not better than the mechanical calculators. They had the four operations, they were expensive but the big plus - I think - is that they were silent (check the sound of a mechanical calculator multiplying on youtube). The speed was not that much faster in human terms.
- Thanks to a video of Gene (whoever cares for the channel "hpcalc.org" on youtube: thank you! Really neat idea) on youtube I got to know that the most of electronical calculator were simple (that is, not much more powerful than a mechanical version). https://youtu.be/g1FnEmeUHjs
- As I wrote, my current knowledge is surely partial but so far it seems that the electronic desktop calculators that were not expensive, were not better than the hp 35 (the first scientific handheld calculator). That still shocks me.
I was thinking that after some years (from 1960 to 1970, 10 years) the scientific functions were really common.
Once again a video of gene shows that the scientific functions were far from being a commodity, at least for commodore calculators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t55vJDNbHDA

Furthermore I found a video on youtube (when you know more, please share!) in which the content delights me because it is not only advertisement, it actually contains a mini lesson in physics and the plotter is amazing!
https://youtu.be/JmTyrS-jfi0