Table Of ContentThe Computer
The Computer
A Brief History of the Machine
That Changed the World
Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro
Copyright © 2022 by Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Swedin, Eric Gottfrid, author. | Ferro, David L., author.
Title: The computer : a brief history of the machine that changed the world
/ Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro.
Other titles: Computers
Description: Santa Barbara, California : Greenwood, an imprint of ABC-CLIO,
LLC, [2022] | Revised edition of: Computers : the life story of a
technology. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022005417 (print) | LCCN 2022005418 (ebook) | ISBN
9781440866043 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781440866050 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Computers—History. | BISAC: COMPUTERS / History | HISTORY
/ Modern / 20th Century / General
Classification: LCC QA76.17 .S94 2022 (print) | LCC QA76.17 (ebook) | DDC
004.09—dc23/eng/20220427
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005417
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005418
ISBN: 978-1-4408-6604-3 (print)
978-1-4408-6605-0 (ebook)
26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available as an eBook.
Greenwood
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
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This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Copyright Acknowledgments
The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following
material:
IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of International
Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product
and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM
trademarks is available on the Web at “IBM Copyright and trademark information” at
www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.
Contents
Introduction vii
ONE Before Computers 1
TWO The First Electronic Computers 27
THREE The Second Generation: From Vacuum
Tubes to Transistors 51
FOUR The Third Generation: From Integrated Circuits to
Microprocessors 69
FIVE Personal Computers: Bringing the Computer
into the Home 93
SIX Connections: Networking Computers Together 121
SEVEN Moore’s Law Triumphant 149
EIGHT Social Media 187
NINE Computers Everywhere 219
TEN Information Security 247
Reflections on the Past and Future: A Conclusion 287
Bibliography 289
Index 295
Introduction
The computer may be the greatest technological and scientific innovation
of modern times. The computer has changed how we work, how we orga-
nize and store information, how we communicate with each other, and
even the way that we think about the universe and the human mind. Com-
puters have alleviated the drudgery of calculating sums and clerical work,
and they have become essential tools in all organizations. Computers have
become ubiquitous in many aspects of everyday life, and the future trend
is that computers will become ever more powerful, more commonplace,
and easier to use. This book tells the story of this evolution.
The story of the computer began long ago. Many ancient civilizations
sought ways to automate mathematics. The clay tablets of Babylon, the
Roman and Chinese abaci, the mechanical adders of Pascal in the 1640s,
and the steam-powered devices imagined by Charles Babbage in the nine-
teenth century all led toward the modern computer.
World War II provided the impetus for the development of the elec-
tronic digital computer. After the war, the Cold War security and defense
needs of the United States drove the development of computing technol-
ogy. These advances principally occurred in the United States: the “giant
brains” of the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) early warn-
ing system included an interactive interface, the connecting of computers
across the country in ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency
Network) led to the internet, and the miniaturization of circuitry for use in
space and missile technology encouraged the development of integrated
circuits.
Billions of computers around the world serve us in many ways, from
helping us to write books to microwaving our food. Only a couple of
decades ago, most people could not imagine the value of a computer in
viii Introduction
their homes, while today a majority of households in Western society con-
tain numerous computers in many different forms. Computers changed the
workplace by making clerical work more efficient and raised the expecta-
tions for greater individual productivity. The role of the secretary has been
reduced, as individuals within the workplace are now expected to master
word processing, spreadsheet, database, and numerous other programs on
their personal workstations. The use of these programs has reduced the
expected turnaround time for any task that these programs facilitate.
The computer created a nexus through which two major trends in human
development—advances in communication and automatic calculation—
came together. With the development of digital circuitry, we see the digitiza-
tion of the senses: motion, sound, the written word, and even tastes and
smells, given the right technology. With the advent of the different digital
networks that make up the internet, we see the possibility of vast volumes of
digitized content moving across the globe in milliseconds. With networked
devices, storing and using this information has become decentralized. The
ease of manipulating digital content, either purposely or accidentally—
especially text and pictures—unfortunately lends itself to fraud. As human
production is digitized, identification and authentication practices struggle
to catch up.
The computer has become such a powerful device that we often adopt it
as a powerful metaphor. Much as the clock in the Middle Ages changed
the way that people interacted with reality through measured time and
Newtonian physics and the invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth
century stimulated scientists to think of the laws of nature in terms of
machines, the success of the computer in the later twentieth century
prompted scientists to think of the basic laws of the universe as being sim-
ilar to the operation of a computer. The new physics of information has
come to view matter and natural laws as bits of information. So too did the
computer change our way of thinking about thinking. Through their efforts
to create artificial intelligence, scientists reimagined the mind in terms of
computer resources and discovered new insights into the biological mech-
anisms of thought and memory, though actual thinking machines are still
more fantasy than reality.
We have striven to write an accessible historical overview of this ever-
changing technology, giving students and the curious lay reader an under-
standing of the scope of its history from ancient times to the present day.
We illuminate the details of the technology while also linking those devel-
opments to the historical context of the times. This book is about the story
Introduction ix
of computers, but it is also the story of the people and events that drove the
many technological innovations that led to modern electronic computers.
Both authors have each spent over four decades in the computer field and
have watched history unfold. We began our careers when punched card
readers were still used and are still actively engaged in our exciting field.
The notion of generations in computing technologies seen in early
chapters actually came from an IBM marketing campaign but was adopted
in the historical field. The term generations implies an inevitable techno-
logical trajectory. It should be obvious after reading this book, however,
that no technological trajectory is inevitable. With each innovation, the
next innovation can appear more obvious, but innovations are also highly
dependent on context. The case of artificial intelligence is most obvious in
this respect, as you shall see.
In 2005, our book Computers: The Life Story of a Technology was pub-
lished as part of the Greenwood Technographies series. Two years later,
the Johns Hopkins University Press published a softcover edition. In the
decade and half since, the history of computers has marched on, especially
with the expansion of the internet; therefore, the story needed updating.
This book has been revised and is almost twice the size of the 2005 book
to accommodate an updated history of the computer.
We both want to thank our families for supporting us during this writ-
ing. For David: thanks to Marjukka, Stella, Robert, Jen, Luca, Andrea,
Hugo, Miles, Michele, Lloyd, Michael, and Barbara. For Eric: thanks to
my parents, Betty, Adam, William, Spencer, and Hannah. We also want to
thank Wired magazine and the Wired website for such great journalism
over the years, often telling the first iteration of stories as they became
history.
