| Title | : | Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.88 (277 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1400075998 |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 464 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2012-12-11 |
| Genre | : |
A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of 2012A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012In this revealing account of how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II, George Dyson illuminates the nature of digital computers, the lives of those who brought them into existence, and how code took over the world. In the 1940s and ‘50s, a small group of men and women—led by John von Neumann—gathered in Princeton, New Jersey, to begin building one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. The codes unleashed within this embryonic, 5-kilobyte universe—less memory than is allocated to displaying a single icon on a computer screen today—broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things, and our universe would never be the same. Turing’s Cathedral is the story of how the most constructive and most destructive of twentieth-centu
Editorial : “The best book I’ve read on the origins of the computernot only learned, but brilliantly and surprisingly idiosyncratic and strange.” —The Boston Globe “A groundbreaking history the book brims with unexpected detail.” —The New York Times Book Review “A technical, philosophical and sometimes personal account wide-ranging and lyrical.” —The Economist “The story of the von Neumann computer project and how it begat today’s digital universe has been told before, but no one has told it with such precision and narrative sweep.” —The New York Review of Books“A fascinating combination of the technical and human stories behind the computing breakthroughs of the 1940s and ‘50s. An important work.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Vivid. A detailed yet readable chronicle of the birth of modern computing. Dyson’s book is one small
Many moments in history could lay claim as the creators of this universe, but as George Dyson marvelously documents in "Turing's Cathedral", the period between 1945 and 1957 at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton is as good a candidate as any.
Dyson's book focuses on the pioneering development of computing during the decade after World War II and essentially centers on one man- John von Neumann. Von Neumann, whose extraordinarily varied scientific activities included inter alia significant contributions to game theory, thermodynamics and nuclear physics, is especially associated with the early development of the electronic digital computer (i.e. He makes it clear that the ascendancy of a revolutionary technology requires both novel theoretical ideas as well as fine craftsmanship. Many examples, Bigelow provides plenty of axioms.
19. A brilliant and passionate philosopher, whose teaching career included positions at Oxford, London, and Edinburgh, Macmurra
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