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The Computers That Made Britain

The Computers That Made Britain
Author: Tim Danton
Publisher: Raspberry Pi Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2021-05-28
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1912047470
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The home computer boom of the 1980s brought with it now-iconic machines such as the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, and Commodore 64. Those machines would inspire a generation and foster the creation of a booming British software industry that continues to this day. With the help of hefty government discounts, computers worked their way into primary and secondary schools around the country. Millions more computers appeared in living rooms and bedrooms around the country. For once, Britain was ahead of the world, helping to create a golden generation of British programmers. The Computers That Made Britain tells the story of 19 of those computers, and what happened behind the scenes. This book is as much a story about each computer's creation as it is about the people that created them. Through dozens of interviews with the people who were there, discover the tales of missed deadlines, technical faults, business interference, and the unheralded geniuses who brought to the UK everything from the Dragon 32 and ZX81, to the Amstrad CPC 464 and Commodore Amiga. This book closes with the story of the Acorn Archimedes, which introduced the revolutionary ARM processor that powers smart watches, laptops, routers, mobile phones, and the Raspberry Pi to this day.

Programmed Inequality

Programmed Inequality
Author: Mar Hicks
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2018-02-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262535181
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This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.

The Computers That Made the World

The Computers That Made the World
Author: Tim Danton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2025-04-15
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781916868076
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This book tells the story of the birth of the computing industry via the origins of 25 influential computers built between 1939 and 1960 Starting with a short, sharp history of how we got to where we were on the eve of the second world war, this book illuminates humanity's desire for calculation aids throughout history, and how that led to the ready reckoner, Napier's bones, Pascal's calculator, the difference engine, the analytical engine, the comptometer and Herman Hollerieth's electronic tabulating machine. This book is a world tour through the modern history of computing, and it begins in 1939 with the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry computer (ABC). From there, the book moves on to the World War II era with ENIAC, the first general-purpose digital computer. The story of computing in World War II takes us through Germany, UK, and the US, and right after that, the book explores the rapid growth of computing power in the post-war years. The years of "big iron" in the US, UK, and the Soviet Union take you through the next couple of decades, moving into the minicomputer era with DEC systems. In The Computers that Made the World, you'll learn about these computers (and more) and also about what happened behind the scenes.

Early British Computers

Early British Computers
Author: Simon Hugh Lavington
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 1980
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780719008108
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Electronic Dreams

Electronic Dreams
Author: Tom Lean
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2016-02-11
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1472918355
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How did computers invade the homes and cultural life of 1980s Britain? Remember the ZX Spectrum? Ever have a go at programming with its stretchy rubber keys? How about the BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, or Commodore 64? Did you marvel at the immense galaxies of Elite, master digital kung-fu in Way of the Exploding Fist or lose yourself in the surreal caverns of Manic Miner? For anyone who was a kid in the 1980s, these iconic computer brands are the stuff of legend. In Electronic Dreams, Tom Lean tells the story of how computers invaded British homes for the first time, as people set aside their worries of electronic brains and Big Brother and embraced the wonder-technology of the 1980s. This book charts the history of the rise and fall of the home computer, the family of futuristic and quirky machines that took computing from the realm of science and science fiction to being a user-friendly domestic technology. It is a tale of unexpected consequences, when the machines that parents bought to help their kids with homework ended up giving birth to the video games industry, and of unrealised ambitions, like the ahead-of-its-time Prestel network that first put the British home online but failed to change the world. Ultimately, it's the story of the people who made the boom happen, the inventors and entrepreneurs like Clive Sinclair and Alan Sugar seeking new markets, bedroom programmers and computer hackers, and the millions of everyday folk who bought in to the electronic dream and let the computer into their lives.

The Difference Engine

The Difference Engine
Author: William Gibson
Publisher: Spectra
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2011-07-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345532589
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1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history—and the future: Sybil Gerard—a fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator Edward “Leviathan” Mallory—explorer and paleontologist Laurence Oliphant—diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for…. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine is the collaborative masterpiece by two of the most acclaimed science fiction authors writing today. Provocative, compelling, intensely imagined, it is a startling extension of Gibson’s and Sterling’s unique visions—and the beginning of movement we know today as “steampunk!”

The Analogue Alternative

The Analogue Alternative
Author: James S. Small
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2013-06-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1134699026
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We are in the midst of a digital revolution - until recently, the majority of appliances used in everyday life have been developed with analogue technology. Now, either at home or out and about, we are surrounded by digital technology such as digital 'film', audio systems, computers and telephones. From the late 1940s until the 1970s, analogue technology was a genuine alternative to digital, and the two competing technologies ran parallel with each other. During this period, a community of engineers, scientists, academics and businessmen continued to develop and promote the analogue computer. At the height of the Cold War, this community and its technology met with considerable success in meeting the urgent demand for high speed computing for use in the design and simulation of rockets, aircraft and manned space vehicles. The Analogue Alternative tracks the development, commercialisation and ultimate decline of the electronic analogue computer in the USA and Britain. It examines the roles played by technical, economic and cultural factors in the competition between the alternative technologies, but more importantly, James Small demonstrates that non-technical factors, such as the role of 'military enterprise' and the working practices of analogue engineers, have been the most crucial in analogue's demise.^l This book will be of interest to students of the history and sociology of science and technology, particularly computing. It will also be relevant to those interested in technical change and innovation, and the study of scientific cultures.

Prophets of Computing

Prophets of Computing
Author: Dick van Lente
Publisher: Morgan & Claypool
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2022-12-14
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1450398189
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When electronic digital computers first appeared after World War II, they appeared as a revolutionary force. Business management, the world of work, administrative life, the nation state, and soon enough everyday life were expected to change dramatically with these machines’ use. Ever since, diverse prophecies of computing have continually emerged, through to the present day. As computing spread beyond the US and UK, such prophecies emerged from strikingly different economic, political, and cultural conditions. This volume explores how these expectations differed, assesses unexpected commonalities, and suggests ways to understand the divergences and convergences. This book examines thirteen countries, based on source material in ten different languages—the effort of an international team of scholars. In addition to analyses of debates, political changes, and popular speculations, we also show a wide range of pictorial representations of "the future with computers."

Computer

Computer
Author: MARTIN. CAMPBELL-KELLY
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-07-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367097509
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100 Immigrants Who Made Britain Great

100 Immigrants Who Made Britain Great
Author: Louis Stewart
Publisher: Canbury Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2024-09-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 191448746X
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Beautifully-illustrated and written, this lively, engaging book celebrates the lives of talented individuals who came to the UK and built a sparkling new life here. From Hans Holbein to Marie Tussaud, Mary Seacole to Mo Farah, find out the real stories of people recognizable to children and adults alike, and other quieter individuals, who have shaped our lives from business to food to medicine. Discover how: • Refugee Michael Marks founded Marks & Spencer • Banker Charles Yerkes built the London Underground • Scientist Ernst Chain developed life-saving penicillin • Activist Claudia Jones launched the Notting Hill Carnival Each individual is celebrated with an original illustration and a short biography. Many showed grit to make their mark on Britain after fleeing persecution or war abroad. All achieved their success through talent and hard work. 100 Immigrants Who Made Britain Great is a stirring gift for any teenager curious about how modern Britain came into being. This book is an ideal accompaniment to Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, 100 Great Black Britons and Amazing Muslims Who Changed the World. Here are the inspirational individuals featured in 100 Immigrants Who Made Britain Great: Ade Adepitan, athlete and TV presenter Alan Yau, restaurateur Alec Issigonis, car designer Alek Wek, model Alf Dubs, politician András Schiff, pianist and conductor Anish Kapoor, sculptor Anna Freud, psychoanalyst Arthur Wharton, footballer Barbara Cooper, RAF officer Bernard Katz, physician Bushra Nasir, headteacher Carlos Acosta, ballet dancer Caroline Herschel, astronomer Charles Kao, physicist and engineer Charles Yerkes, financier Charlotte Auerbach, geneticist Claudia Jones, journalist and activist Claus Moser, statistician Connie Mark, campaigner Deborah Doniach, immunologist Dennis Gabor, physicist and engineer Dietrich Küchemann, engineer Doreen Lawrence, campaigner Edith Bülbring, scientist Emma Orczy, novelist and playwright Erich Reich, entrepreneur Ernst Chain, scientist Ernst Gombrich, author Eugène Rimmel, perfumer Fanny Eaton, model Freddie Mercury, pop singer George Frideric Handel, composer George Weidenfeld, publisher Gina Miller, entrepreneur and activist Graeme Hick, cricketer Hans Holbein, painter Hans Krebs, scientist Harry Gordon Selfridge, retailer Henry Wellcome, scientist Ida Copeland, politician Ida Freund, academic Ira Aldridge, actor and playwright Iris Murdoch, novelist Isaiah Berlin, philosopher Jacob Epstein, sculptor Jimi Hendrix, musician Joan Armatrading, musician Johanna Weber, engineer John Barnes, footballer John Edmonstone, footballer Joseph Conrad, author Joseph Rotblat, physicist Judith Kerr, author Karan Bilimoria, entrepreneur Karel Kuttelwascher, fighter pilot Krystyna Skarbek, wartime spy Kylie Minogue, pop singer Lew Grade, broadcaster Lucian Freud, painter Ludwig Goldscheider, publisher Ludwig Guttmann, neurologist Magdi Yacoub, heart surgeon Malala Yousafzai, campaigner Marc Isambard Brunel, engineer Margaret Busby, publisher and editor Marie Tussaud, entrepreneur Mary Prince, campaigner Mary Seacole, nurse Maureen Dunlop de Popp, pilot Michael Marks, retailer Mo Farah, athlete Mona Hatoum, artist Montague Burton, retailer Moses Montefiore, banker Nasser Hussain, cricketer Oscar Nemon, scupltor Parveen Kumar, doctor Peter Porter, poet Prince Albert, royal consort Raheem Sterling, footballer Richard Rogers, architect Sake Dean Mahomed, surgeon Shanta Pathak, entrepreneur Sislin Fay Allen, police officer Solly Zuckerman, military adviser Stelios Haji-Ioannou, entrepreneur Steve Shirley, entrepreneur Stuart Hall, academic TS Eliot, poet Tessa Sanderson, athlete Trevor McDonald, newscaster Valerie Amos, lawyer and politician Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, biologist Vera Atkins, wartime spy Violette Szabo, wartime spy William Butement, scientist Yasmin Qureshi, politician and barrister Yvonne Thompson, entrepreneur Zaha Hadid, architect The introduction is by Bonnie Greer, the Chicago-born playwright and cultural commentator. Buy the book to see what she says about the contribution of immigrants to the UK