Ask HN: Greatest books about the history of computing
The Dream Machine is giving me a great appreciation of the time-sharing revolution and ARPANET. What else should I read? Any timeframe or topic is OK, so long as it's strongly related to the history of computing.
The standard textbooks by historians are:
A History of Modern Computing by Paul Ceruzzi
There is a completely rewritten version of this with an additional author:
A New History of Modern Computing by Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi
Also:
Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray
There are good books by journalists and popular writers. Favorites on HN are:
The Dream Machine -- you are already reading this. Also:
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthey Lyon
These and many many other books are recomended and described in this HN thread from a few years ago:
Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22692281
Are there any books about the semiconductor industry?
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
It's a little zoomed out and more focused on information theory than computers, specifically, but the overlap is significant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_...
Quick plug for my HN book club on that book! We just finished Ch 1 of The Dream Machine, if you’re interested in joining.
https://discord.gg/9tgxgg3J
The Art of Computer Programming contains a lot of computing history.
Also it is a lot of computing history.
Turing’s Cathedral
The Universal Computer
Computer Connections: https://computerhistory.org/blog/computer-history-museum-lic...
The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann by Herman Goldstine.
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
Good book. Can be a bit dry here and there, but fascinating
Tracy Kidder.The Soul of a New Machine.
About the development of the Data General new minicomputer. Published 1982.
Singh Simon - Code book is an excellent and fantastic read about the history of cryptography and provide insights of what really drove technical improvements in ww1 and 2.
Brian Kernighan's newly released "UNIX: A History and a Memoir"
A Quarter Century of UNIX
Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier
Fire in the Valley - The making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine, published by McGraw Hill, 2000 463 pages. Excellent reference telling many of the P.C stories.
Dealers of lightning about Xerox parc is quite impressive
Two good ones: 1) Where Wizards Stay Up Late and 2) How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone
Chip War - Chris Miller