IBM's Early Computers

mitpress.mit.edu

32 points·tosh··17 comments

This, and "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems" are two of my favorite computer-related books. I wish other historical books were as thick and as thorough and well-written.

Seconded. They are both great books. Some really amazing stories in there, like the development of the first hard drive.

If you're interested in documentation on early IBM computers, including the rare 600/700 series, there is a ton of stuff here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/

I'm reading this book right now and it's glorious- it goes into a ton of detail on the history and design of early mechanical punchcard tabulators, sorters, multipliers, etc, in order to get you to the motivation to make it all electronic, etc.

Highly recommend it.

Also- this "printing" is really more a xerox of the original- and the "print" quality stinks. I got an older hardcover version off of amazon that was actually typeset and much easier to read.

Clutch advise. I just bought the last old used copyin Amazon. For about half the retail.

Oh, cool. My grandfather's name is listed in the index.

Why did you post a link to the overview of an out-of-print book? That's fairly pointless.

If you found the overview interesting, you can get the book from the library.

And the link directly takes you to a "how to buy". There are multiple copies available. A bigger question is why we in the computer field let important histories of our profession go out of print so quickly.

...and online libraries too. ;-)

It's not out of print, Amazon will happily sell you a copy.

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