Faster than Thought : A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines

New York, Toronto, London: Pitman Publishing Corporation, 1966. Later printing. Cloth. Near Fine/Very Good. Later printing. xix, [3], [3]-416 pages. 8vo. Publisher's blue cloth in printed blue, white, and black dust jacket. Dj priced $10.75. Dj is bright, with several edges tears and associated creases at corners and fraying at head of dj. Presents nicely. Cloth. A later printing (the first edition was 1953), here the sixth printing of 1966. An important historical work, with contributors of articles including the likes of Kilburn, Booth, Turing and Wilkes. The sections include Part One: The history and theory of Computing Machines; Part Two: Electronic Computing machines in Britain and America; Part Three: Applications of Electronic Computing Machines. With 18 plates.

:Begun as a sales brochure, this work became the most widely read early English introduction to electronic computing, remaining in print without changes as late as 1968. It was edited by Bowden, and employee of Ferranti Limited witth a doctorate from Cambridge who was probably the first electronic computer salesman in England. The text by Bowen and twenty-four authors, of which only one was American, has a distinctly British bias with relatively little information about American machines....the work contains much information on Babbage (including a reprint of the Lovelace translation of Menabrea's paper;..) and chapters on British computer projects of the 1940s and early 1950s...Turing's chapter documents his moderately successful work on programming the Manchester machine to imitate human thought processes, in this case game-playing. He described the first machine capable of playing a complete game of chess...." (Origins of Cyberspace #505)

LITERATURE:
Hook and Norman, Origins of Cyberspace, Novato, CA, 2002.