Browse Books

Reviewer: Thomas J. Bergin

Few of us ever stop to realize that computing, per se, has been with us for more than 50 years. Yes, the Electronic Numeric Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) was dedicated at the Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania on February 14, 1946. Since that time, computers have gone from filling large rooms to fitting in the palm of our hands; the cost of acquiring a computer has gone from tens of millions to a few hundred dollars; computers are now used by individuals as well as large multinational corporations; and the cumbersome and difficult scientific and commercial applications of the early days have yielded to smooth intuitive applications that enhance and enrich our day-to-day lives. Until the last few years, however, the literature on the history of computing focused on the very early days of computing. A history of hardware started with the abacus and ended with vacuum tubes and transistors [1]. Histories of programming languages started with Fortran and Cobol, and ended with Smalltalk and C++ [2,3]. Indeed, even biographies tended to be of people long deceased. However important that material might be (and it is important), there is a need for a broader look at this history, one that includes the last 25 years and encompasses such phenomena as minicomputers, microcomputers, graphical user interfaces, and the Internet. In a way, the democratization of computing seems to demand a democratization of the history of computing, even at the risk of not having had enough years in which to gain a true perspective. Fortunately, historians have started to look at the history of computing from this broader perspective [4]. This book is a significant and most scholarly attempt to provide perspective on this history. Ceruzzis goal was to write a “history of computing from the completion of the ENIAC in 1945 to the networks of personal computers at work and at home in the 1990s.” In this, he succeeds, but also sows the seeds of criticism: his effort succeeds in enlightening the reader but at the same time opens him, as a scholar, to the criticisms that will be addressed to anyone plowing new ground. Although much is told in the book, much that could shed light on this exciting period of computing history is omitted. The book consists of nine chapters: The Advent of Commercial Computing, 1945–1956 Computing Comes of Age, 1956–1964 The Early History of Software, 1952–1968 From Mainframe to Minicomputer, 1959–1969 The Go-Go Years and the System360, 1961–1975 The Chip and Its Impact, 1965–1975 The Personal Computer, 1972–1977 Augmenting Human Intellect, 1975–1985 Workstations, UNIX, and the Net, 1981– 1995 As might be expected, the earlier chapters are the strong est, perhaps due to the enormous amount of prior scholarship about the hardware, software, companies, and people in the early years. In these chapters, Ceruzzi explains the political, social, and economic factors that drove the development of computing and computing organizations, from the perspective of the manufacturer or vendor and that of the user. In these early chapters, the thematic approach of minicomputers, software, and integrated circuits works well. The later chapters, while providing a good overview of each period identified, lack depth, perhaps because there is not enough time or space to encompass everything that happened, or because so many of the pieces evolved at the same time and need to be discussed together. This is not so much a criticism of Ceruzzis effort as an admission that understanding history is complex and that trying to write history while it is going on (or when it has recently ended) is both difficult and fraught with danger for both the historian and the reader. This book is an important addition to the literature and one in which anyone interested in the history of computing should invest. Ceruzzi is to be applauded, not just for undertaking such a large task but for the depth of his scholarship. The endnotes, bibliography, and index occupy 85 pages and provide a valuable tool for someone trying to answer a question, as well as for someone who starts on page 1 and reads to the end.