200 Years of the Difference Engine
Selected by the Bookshop
In June 1822 Charles Babbage delivered a paper at the Royal Astronomical Society whose title was ‘Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables.’ It took most of the next two centuries for the profound implications of the paper to be realised. To mark the anniversary, here’s a selection of books around, about and taken from the history and literature of computing.
From the publisher:
The computer age has arrived a century ahead of time with Charles Babbage’s perfection of his Analytical Engine. The Industrial Revolution, supercharged by the development of steam-driven cybernetic Engines, is in full and drastic…
From the publisher:
An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it-and explains why they have died todayMany think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of…
From the publisher:
Translated from the Danish by Jennifer RussellAn artist in her thirties weaves and unravels connections between the loom and the computer, DNA and technology, dreams and decisionsThread Ripper is a double-stranded novel about weaving,…
From the publisher:
Includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter.Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his…
From the publisher:
INTRODUCED BY IRENOSEN OKOJIECOVER BY REFIK ANADOL During the first summer of the coronavirus pandemic, a diary entry by K Allado-McDowell initiates an experimental conversation with the AI language model GPT-3. Over the course of a…
From the publisher:
'So impossibly funny, clever, demented, charming and altogether wonderful that I was a convert within three pages. Buy it for everyone you know, regardless of what you think they like. Brilliant stuff' Lucy Mangan, Stylist Books of the…
From the publisher:
THE BOOK BEHIND THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERGNow available for the first time in a beautiful hardback edition, perfect for hardcore fans and collectorsA world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you…
From the publisher:
The pixellated rectangle we spend most of our day staring at in silence is not the television, as many long feared, but the computer – the ubiquitous portal of work and personal lives. The computer is now so common we don’t even…
From the publisher:
'One of the greatest achievements in comedy. A work of staggering genius' - David WalliamsAn international phenomenon and pop-culture classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been a radio show, TV series, novel, stage play, comic…
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