《man who invented the computer》是2010年Random House US出版社出版的圖書，作者是Jane Smiley。
基本介紹
- 中文名：man who invented the computer
- 作者：Jane Smiley
- 出版社：Random House US出版社
- 出版時間：2010年10月
- 裝幀：精裝
- ISBN：9780385527132
內容簡介
From one of our most acclaimed novelists, a David-and-Goliath biography for the digital age.
One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the Illinois–Iowaborder, John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at IowaState University, after a frustrating day performing tediousmathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that thebinary number system and electronic switches, com?bined with anarray of capacitors on a moving drum to serve as memory, couldyield a computing machine that would make his life and the lives ofother similarly burdened scientists easier. Then he went back andbuilt the machine. It worked. The whole world changed.
Why don’t we know the name of John Atanasoff as well as we knowthose of Alan Turing and John von Neumann? Because he neverpatented the device, and because the developers of thefar-better-known ENIAC almost certainly stole critical ideas fromhim. But in 1973 a court declared that the patent on that SperryRand device was invalid, opening the intellectual property gates tothe computer revolution.
Jane Smiley tells the quintessentially American story of thechild of immigrants John Atanasoff with technical clarity andnarrative drive, making the race to develop digital computing asgripping as a real-life techno-thriller.
