How Computers Work... in 1971

prostoalex writes "A recent submission to my free tech books site included a title that I thought many Slashdotters would enjoy. How It Works: The Computer (published 1971 and re-published 1979) is an exciting look into this new thing called computer. The site presents the scanned pages of 1971 and 1979 editions, and you can see how the page on computer code changes over 8 years from punchcards exclusively to magnetic tapes."

Comments

Student Flashback

[Burb]

When starting an Electronics degree course in 1981 (was it really so long ago, sigh) the lecturers recommended this book as a start point for anyone who had no idea about computers.

I presume it was the 79 edition they recommended.

What a lovely nostalgia trip. Thanks!

What I find most impressive ...

[YetAnotherName]

... is how well your site's holding up under the slashdotting!

On topic, though, it is a quaint little trip you've provided. It's fun to see the historical context of a chosen career (a chosen passion, I should say). In 1971 I was 1 to 2 years old, and don't recall what the professional goal was. Later it would be "astronaut," until grade school, when video games (c.f. this posting) made "computer programmer" be the new (and final) choice.

Apparently, the publisher, Ladybird Books, has had its own interesting history, and is now part of Penguin.

I've still got that book

[palfreman]

I've still got that book. It's been pretty out of date for a long time (er, very out of date), but it is very good at explaining things like assembler, old style core memory and flow charting for kids - sets them on the right path, instead of messing them up with an a childized gui's, talking elephants and suchlike.

The people who wrote this book basically felt that a child of 8 should not have the inner workings of a computer being hidden from them, but be taught th technical side from day 1.

Anyway, 20 years later this book is still where I first learnt about flow charts and cpu registers!

Re:Women and Computers

[ljavelin]

were they a little optimistic that there would be just as many women as men working on computers?

No, they were showing reality.

Most (but not all!) programmers were men - they'd be writing the code.

But most men weren't expected to type... at least not all that well or fast. So they had special purpose "keypunch operators" - mostly women - who would take the hand-written code (written on "coding sheets") and key it onto punchcards. Accuracy and speed in typing were key.

In addition, operators would feed cards into the computers, etc etc.

It wasn't a glamorous or creative job. As "on-line" systems and terminals like the 3270 and VT-100 were deployed, the keypunch operators slowly faded away.

I'd assume that a few exceptionally interested keypunch operators learned to identify programming and machine errors and found their way into programmer ranks.

Re:Women and Computers

[Draoi]

Is it me, or were they a little optimistic that there would be just as many women as men working on computers?

Probably, though back in the early days, the first programmers were women. Ada Lovelace has been described as Founder of Scientific Computing Grace Hopper also comes to mind. Futhermore, back in the days of cracking Enigma codes, it was teams of women who programmed the bombes. Somewhere along the line, computer programming was co-opted into professional studies as 'engineering' and 'science' and unfortunately, women were actively discouraged from entering those professions. Only now is this changing ...