Paperback: 459 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; 2 edition (May 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262532034
ISBN-13: 978-0262532037

This book delivers exactly what its title promises: a straightforward and comprehensive account of the electronic digital computer’s first five decades. Starting with the historic ENIAC of 1945, Ceruzzi moves nimbly through one epochal generation of computing technology after another: the gargantuan, vacuum-tube-filled mainframes of the early ’50s; the sleeker, transistorized minicomputers of the ’60s; the personal computers conjured up by hobbyists in the ’70s; and the computer networks that have come to span offices and the globe in the last 10 years.