Ask HN: How to learn about the history of computing? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to learn about the history of computing?

101 pointsvanschelven83 comments

It is often remarked in the comments here that our "field" appears to have a very bad memory; that we repeat past mistakes and ignore past learnings. I would like to interpret these remarks as an advice to "get schooled".

What are some good sources (books?) to get started on this? Most things I can find appear to stop at Turing / Von Neumann, but one would like to think that history hasn't stopped at that point in time.

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The most authoritative work is Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing (http://amzn.to/1TiHgqd). Because it's written by an academic, not a journalist, it also has a great bibliography and footnotes. Some of the works it cites that are very valuable in themselves, depending on your area of interest, are:

- R. Hodeson, Crystal Fire (on the invention of the transistor), http://amzn.to/1RictfF

- T.R. Reid, The Chip (on the IC), http://amzn.to/1Hdbu8w

- E.W. Pugh, IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems, (on the evolution of computer architecture), http://amzn.to/1NKZcWQ

Also, as others have mentioned, Soul of a New Machine is awesome.

I feel like you may be asking about computer science, though, not computer hardware. If so, pickings are slim. Two that stand out are:

- S. Rosenberg, Dreaming in Code, http://amzn.to/1HdbJk1 (Not really a history of code, just the history of a single project)

- M. Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog, http://amzn.to/1RicYpS (which, while not quite as amazing as the others, is the only history of the software industry as a whole I know of.)

The "History of Computing" class I took in college used Ceruzzi's "A History of Modern Computing" and "From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog" as our textbooks.

Some that I liked:

- Hackers : http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversar...

- The Soul of a New Machine: http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New-Machine/dp/0316491977

- Show Stopper! : http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Micr...

- Dealers of Lightning: http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/...

- Where Wizards Stay Up Late: http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/06848326...

I'll second Hackers Heroes of the Computer Revolution, I found that a really fascinating book.

Hackers was a fun read but I don't think it's really an answer to the original question asking about computing history and expressing a concern that our field has a short memory. The OP's complaint was that most history stops at Turing and everything in Hackers is about MIT post-Turing.

> The OP's complaint was that most history stops at Turing and everything in Hackers is about MIT post-Turing.

Before Turing, it was a handful of people obsessed with computing things efficiently. That history is difficult to extract from the hardware pre-Turing.

Absolutely. It does a great job of showing the spirit of the early hackers at MIT, even though it's not really a technical book.

I'd add in that list the New Hacker's Dictionary edited by Eric S Raymond http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Hackers-Dictionary-Edition/dp/... - (aka the Jargon File http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ ) It includes many computing terms invented over the years with their meanings and origins. You can learn a a bit about computer history by readin it.

'Hackers' is avalaible as a free ebook too:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/729

"The Soul of a New Machine" is an excellent book. It is about the creation of the first 32 bit minicomputer hardware, complete with descriptions of ADVENTURE (aka Colossal Cave) and the "Maze of twisty passages all alike" and memorable lines such as "I am going to a commune in Vermont, and will deal with no time period shorter than a season" said after much work on gate delays and intstruction timing iassues...

I thought Hackers and Soul of a New Machine were both fantastic.

Dealers of Lightning because you might learn some new words, and did you know they had to fight to get the laser printer to the world?

Computer History Museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/

In particular, Software Preservation Group (SPG): http://www.computerhistory.org/groups/spg/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/

Even more in particular ;-) -- the videos at the Oral History Collection: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/

They're also on YouTube -- https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory/playlists -- but the ones above have synced transcripts.

To get a flavor, take a look at the one with Bjarne Stroustrup, really enjoyed it: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/vid...

// More in this category (with some big names): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQsxaNhYv8daKdGi7s85u...

I'll echo the Computer History Museum suggestion. If you're in the Bay Area and haven't paid it a visit, it's well worth your time. Books are nice and all, but sometimes seeing the physical artifacts give things a nice perspective.

I started Steven Levy's Hackers and I'm really enjoying it. http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/hackers

Seeing as he wrote Crypto and Insanely Great too, it seems to be his kind of thing.

Also folklore.org is a nice collection of fables on how the sausage got made.

Charles Petzold's Code is interspersed with enjoyable historical perspective too.

http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/

Seconding Code. It's not about the history of culture, but it's a walkthrough of how computing hardware evolved to what we have today.

Yes, I came to recommend this book. It's a fantastic read, one of my favorites.

Can not recommend this book enough (Code by Petzold)... Extremely well written with timeless information on understanding the history of computing and coding.

Thirding Code

Fourthing Code.

If you want a very detailed account of the super early history of electronic computing, George Dyson's "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe."

http://www.amazon.com/Turings-Cathedral-Origins-Digital-Univ...

Other great titles I'd recommend is Steven Levy's "Hackers" http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution-Ann... and Phil Lapsley's "Exploding the Phone" http://www.amazon.com/Exploding-Phone-Untold-Teenagers-Outla...

Hope you enjoy!

George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral is by far the best book I have read on this subject.

Lots of great book suggestions here. I'm going to throw in a video series put out by PBS in the 90s in cooperation with the Boston Computer Museum (now the Computer History Museum in California).

"The Machine that Changed the World"

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFRdV1r4nU

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krlZf5H7Hp4

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwEpKy_7mYM

Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXMaFhO6dIY

Of course, a lot of computer history materials are going to focus on the commercial aspects, hardware and software, rather than advances in Computer Science itself.

One thing that might help there is to track down old CS textbooks on eBay to understand what used to be the state of the art. The "dinosaur book" on operating systems usually has a bonus chapter on the architecture behind some recent operating system. It was Windows XP when I took my OS class. I found an older copy that talked about VMS once.

Part 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z8OmqY3zJI

One of the features of Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is a thorough documentation of the history of ideas. Given that Knuth has been writing for the majority of the period in which we have had digital computers [and nearly all of the time in which we have had high level languages] he has been able to document many things as they have happened. TAoCP has created much of contemporary computing practice and the history of the field.

There is no replacement for primary sources. If you want to understand what makes Lisp the object of love songs, Graham's On Lisp is the book to read. If you want to understand what made Smalltalkers so smug, then grab you a Smalltalk manual and take the time to learn it [and here Knuth's patient approach to "really knowing" is informative...and there's a Norvig short course for just-get-to-the-point Pythonistas].

The pre-internet history of computing lives on the web in PDF's and in boxes at the used book store. Our quilt of knowledge is mostly missing patches and there are a lot of candidate patches sitting unconnected in the box. Even Knuth knows he'll never know it all.

Good luck.

Sorry to be pedantic, but in what way is 'On Lisp' a primary source? Especially compared to a Smalltalk manual.

On Lisp is:

  1. Oft cited.
  2. Minimally citing.
  3. Primarily comprised of original material.
  4. Written by an academic.

I don't think that there is only one way of being a primary source. This is pretty common: for example, all the works of Aristotle are believed to be his student's notes, not his original words.

Don't get me wrong, it is worth reading McCarthy's original paper and the Lisp 1.5 manual as well as On Lisp. The bandpass filter should be set to a broad spectrum. Computing is so young that we don't know what will constitute it's canon in 100 years: Today, C. S. Pierce's pragmaticism is philosophical, William James' is considered scientific psychology via historic interpretation. Computing hasn't yet gone through a thorough rewriting as described by Kuhn in Structure of Scientific Revolution. But the interwebs are perhaps the paradigm shift that could cause one.

- Steve Jobs' biographer wrote a book last year called "Innovators" which I found to be one of the best works I have read: http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Hackers-Geniuses-Created-Re...

- Robert X. Cringely's book "Accidential Empires" is definitely dated but you can read most of the chapters on his blog here: http://www.cringely.com/tag/accidental-empires/

- Cringely also did a three part special back in the 90s that I like revisiting every once in a while. Again, pretty dated but entertaining nevertheless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuBXbvl1Sg4

- Skip the newer Steve Jobs movies and watch the history of Apple and Microsoft with Pirates of Silicon Valley. It's said to be mostly accurate: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v46093745wbEGkakh

- Kind of random but if you want a look back at what the 90s tech bubble was like then watch Startup.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuiUXOTE4M

I second the recommendation of Innovators. Even though it does not go into deep detail, it provides a good overview of the history of computing. It is easy to then follow-up with specific literature if a topic piques one's interest.

In addition, I would also recommend "Intel Trinity" by Michael Malone (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-Trinity-Robert-Important-Compa...). It covers the post-Fairchild era from Intel's point of view.

I'm close to finish Walter Isaacson's Innovators. It's a great book and he's a great writer. Really enjoying it.

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal. I read this book 8 years ago and I still feel like quoting it sometimes. It's not just a biography but a well researched work on the history of the later part of computing history. http://www.amazon.com/The-Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution...

Gordon Bell and Allen Newell edited wrote "Computer Structures: Readings and Examples" 1971, which is a collection of original technical papers and their commentary on significant computers. It is online at: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/Computer...

With Daniel P. Siewiorek, they revised the book in 1982 as "Computer Structures: Principles and Examples" with new material, it is online at: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/Computer...

There are lots of inexpensive copies of the books available at used book sites or Amazon. All of Gordon Bell's publications are at: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/Pubs.htm

In 2011, Ron Mak taught a course at San Jose State University: CS 185C: The History of Computing. He invited a number of famous experts to speak to the class, including Bell, Knuth, Kay, Gosling, Feigenbaum, Alcorn, etc. (I am certainly not famous; I gave a lecture on the HP-35 and other early pocket calculators). http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/~mak/CS185C/

There are a lot of links to papers and other videos. The textbook used in the class was "A History of Modern Computing, 2nd edition" by Paul E. Ceruzzi

Visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, Paul Allen's Living Computer Museum in Seattle, WA (computers that still run), and London's Science Museum.

And the CCS at Bletchley. http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/index.htm

Simon Lavington wrote a book about the Elliott Brothers company, one of the earliest UK computer manufacturers. They did a lot of stuff. I worked there for a couple of years at their end-of-life (ICL mergers) on the 4100 series, and some prototype peripherals.

http://www.amazon.com/Moving-Targets-Elliott-Automation-Comp...

For programming languages, the HOPL papers, many of which can be found online for free. http://www.multicians.org/ is also a fascinating site on the OS that served as an inspiration/opposite for Unix. On that note, you can gain a good amount of perspective by reading on the "losing side" of history: Ada, Multics, Wirth's languages, Lisp machines, Smalltalk, etc.

To echo everyone; Hackers is a great book. Steven Levy books are both compelling reads and content rich. Crypto and In the plex both have their place as well. http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&field... I would also say "The Information" by James Gleick. It is a page turner with some neat concepts. Which is not so easy to do. http://www.amazon.ca/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/140...

Seconding "The Information". I had it on audiobook and listened to it during long car trips. It was very compelling and informative.

Check Niklaus Wirth work on Modula-2 and Oberon, and its respective OS.

http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/

http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/projects.html

http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/books.html

http://www.modulaware.com/mwbiblio.htm

Noteworthy

"Compiler Construction" -

"Project Oberon" both 1992 and 2013 versions

Oberon descedents "EthOS", "Active Oberon" and "Component Pascal":

http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/view/eth:38713

http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/view/eth:27966

All the Xerox PARC stuff about Mesa, Cedar, Interlisp-D, Smalltalk,

http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xer...

How Apple used Common Lisp, Object Pascal, UNIX, Hypercard and lots of other goodies on their early systems

http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...

Smalltalk books, specially

http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html

I highly recommend Jimmy Maher's Digital Antiquarian blog at http://www.filfre.net/

The focus is mainly on computer games from the late 70s (and currently up to the late 80s), but that includes general posts about personal computers like the Apple ][, TRS-80, Commodore 64 and Amiga and the personalities behind them, on programming languages like Forth and the various tricks and inventions required to get complex games to run on very restrained hardware. It's all very readable, meticulously researched and quite in-depth.

"Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age" is a great book:

http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Information-Lemelson-Studies...

Some important developments in computing in the sixties and early seventies were driven by the NASA space programs. Some sources:

Computers in Spaceflight - The NASA Experience: http://history.nasa.gov/computers/contents.html

Digital Apollo, by David A. Mindell - https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-apollo

The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation by Frank O'Brien - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Apollo-Guidance-Computer-Archite... (highly detailed)

I'd also recommend Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson and The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder.

Many early IT systems used special-purpose hardware, and boundary between the software and hardware development wasn't as clear as it is now. For this reason, I think, many surveys tend to emphasise the hardware aspect.

"Coders at Work" [1] had some really great insights about the history of programming. I particularly liked the interview with Fran Allen. Her thoughts on the disastrous effect that the C programming language had on the development of computer science were very interesting.

[1]: http://www.codersatwork.com/

Many good sources mentioned already.

In addition, these, and most importantly where they lead you according to your interests. "Use the links, Luke."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_technology

E. W. Dijkstra Archive http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/

There are academic disciplines and degree programs in the history of science and subsets of science, with different subset emphasis depending on where you go and who is there.

http://hssonline.org/about/

http://history-computer.com/MechanicalCalculators/Pioneers/M...

Take a look at the ancient work in the field, and how those principles got dragged into computing.

https://calculating.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/calculators-for...

This used to be a web-museum of Russian calculators: http://www.taswegian.com/MOSCOW/

And there are emulators here: http://www.emulator3000.org/c3.htm

But really, Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication crams in so much stuff that it's not too surprising that we don't go back further.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/

A mountain of original docs, including memos of old design meetings at DEC, lots of brochures and manuals, and copies of relics like the first edition of the Unix Programmers' Manual.

Not much overview, but still a fascinating resource.

Computers and the World of the Future (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computers-and-world-future) is a highly recommended read. It's not a "history" text per-se, but rather, it is a transcript of a number of talks (and the resulting discussions) given by the then-stalwarts of computing in 1961. It's a fascinating account of the what these people thought about the direction in which computing was taking. John McCarthy, for example, talked about the "utility computing":

"We can envisage computing service companies whose subscribers are connected to them by telephone lines. Each subscriber needs to pay only for the capacity he actually uses, but he has access to all programming languages characteristic of a very large system."

"Casting The Net" is a good companion book to "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" already mentioned here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0201876744

Again, and already mentioned, "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder is a great read. It's a particular favourite what with being an ex-Data General field engineer (maintained and fixed Nova 3/4 and Eclipse S/130/140's and associated peripherals).

I can also recommend "In Search of Stupidity:Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters" which about how the old giants of the early PC software industry (Ashton Tate, MicroPro et al) made colossal mistakes resulting in their extinction.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1590597214

I would advise to hands on machine. You can run many classical machines in emulators like Hercules now.

e.g. Try a bit on COBOL and REXX to process records in a batch. Next play around with Panel Features, Overlay Generation, CICS and CODASYL to write classical interactive applications. This will show that web is just 3270 on steroids, with a much bigger memory and CPU footprint.

Now read Stonebraker and C.J.Date, and realize what a relieve relational medium size databases had been. That the burden of non relational databases only makes sense for small size high performance databases that fit into RAM, or big databases that have to scale over a cluster.

You can also explore Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth, and P-Code machines. Operating Systems like Oberon or Spin. Each of them will offer an insight of how virtual machines evolved. And languages like Lisp, Smalltalk, and Forth are eye opening as they enforce their paradigm.

For me, understanding the history of computing goes hand in hand with a willingness to engage any computer programming language. It is easy not to learn that COBOL solved really hard problems of data storage and control flow and organizing teams of programmers against big big projects in the days before...well before just about everything we see in computing today. COBOL was NoSQL by necessity.

Some resources you might find useful:

- the soul of a new machine

- https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/History_of_Computers

Then, to answer your question a bit more directly:

IT people making past mistakes over and over again is somewhat related to the pendulum of centralization/decentralization that swings with some regularity. This means that every couple of years a new generation comes along with tech that is relatively new at that point in time who experience the same needs as were present a full cycle ago. Using the new tools they then implement solutions which may be prettier but fundamentally not as strong as solutions that are much older but extremely crude from a presentation point of view.

Examples of these are plentiful, and this is still besides the NIH syndrome that plagues the industry in a more concurrent fashion.

This might be a bit broader but I enjoyed "How We Got Here" by Andy Kessler, which is available for free (emailed link[1] or direct[2] if you prefer. It's more about how the systems and engineering that predated computing influenced its development to where it is now. Actually it's argument is it's been computing all along since before we had vacuum tubes. Worth a read.

[1] http://akessler.blogs.com/andy_kessler/2005/04/hwgh.html

[2] http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/excerpts/How_We_Got_...

There is Ceruzzi's book mentioned elsewhere, but you might find some others interesting too.

- "The Soul of a New Machine" is about the development of a mini-computer.

- "What The Dormouse Said" is a fun read and exploration about counterculture, the Silicon Valley and microcomputers and on why it all happened together.

- "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" is an account on the dawn of the Internet.

- "Computing in The Middle Ages" is a first-person account on the birth of the personal computer. No, not the one you thought.

- "Accidental Empires" seems a little bit dated in retrospective, but it's an exceedingly fun to read book and will give you great insight on what we were thinking about the personal computer revolution while it happened around us.

I've gone through quite a few computing-related 'history' books recently (incl. ) but by far the stand out winner was

- 'The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of Innovation' - http://amzn.com/0143122797.

It deals with the creation of Bell Labs and continues through to modern day, giving a deep history of it. A lot of familiar names(Shockley, Shannon et al.) all pop up.

Another good book not yet mentioned would be: 'The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution ' - http://amzn.com/B00JSRQSL6

"The Art of Unix Programming" (Eric S. Raymond) has a longish section on the history of Unix, which is very illuminating, as it stretches several decades of its development.

"The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier" (Bruce Sterling) I wouldn't call this a really good book, but it's interesting to have read it if you didn't yet have anything to do with computers in the early 1990s. It tells the story of how crackers (not hackers!) came to public prominence, and gives some insight into the early days of the Internet.

Both are available for free.

You can find some great resources (although more unstructured) on Youtube. I recommend the following: - Computerphile (https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile) - The Secret Life of Machines (1990's series)(some episodes touch on computing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOULWR4h4Io)

I can recommend the book Technomanifestos: Visions of the Information Revolutionaries by Adam Brate. The book is out of print and no digital versions are available. The book is still for sale on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Technomanifestos-Information-Revoluti...

Rob Landley has nice collection at http://landley.net/history/

At http://doc.cat-v.org/ you will find good resources about Unix history. At http://man.cat-v.org/ you can find historic man pages.

This was, IIRC, on HN recently http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/

very very detailed log about the computing efforts at Columbia (among others) since the 19th. Interesting because it's an insider insider point of view, I believe it has less bias and distortion than other historical documents.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.

It's half-comic-book, half-historical-footnotes. It's a very fun way to look at the early history of computing. You see history as it could have been by reading a comic and you see history as it was by reading footnotes. Both of them are given about an equal amount of space in the book. There are great appendices that describe how the hardware performed arithmetic.

Please take a look at this book "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters". You may find it a good fit for your thirst of knowledge.

[edit] Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G0OANQ?psc=1&ref_=oh_au...

Certainly on the informal side, but you might find interest in: http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/

Or in printed book form: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-hackers-dictionary

Thanks to everyone for your wonderful and detailed recommendations! This really exploded "overnight". The question went seemingly unnoticed for a couple of hours and I left the keyboard until just now, so I'm sorry I didn't get to interact with the individual recommendations as they came in. In any case, I'll be heading of to the (virtual) bookstore now.

The Crockford's lecture about history of web-development (starting far before first computing machines and ending on javascript) is definitely must-watch. It's not so detailed because it's not a book, but gives a good overview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxAXlJEmNMg

I actually think I found this on HN a while back: http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/index.html

Covers a lot of the history of open source, pretty good read too.

Not a computing history book per se, but has some chapters about Alan Turing and the work done at Bletchley Park in WWII. Also the best introduction book to Cryptography.

Simon Singh, The Code Book http://amzn.com/0385495323

I did a post a while back on this topic, which might be of interest: http://www.elegantcoding.com/2014/08/a-brief-and-incomplete-...

> It is often remarked in the comments here that our "field" appears to have a very bad memory

Since you seem ahead of the field maybe you should just start programming. It's the people who ignore history that need historical awareness.

Anyway, I recommended Dealers of Lightning in another comment.

"History of Semiconductor Engineering" by Dr. Bo Lojek. Great book on the underlying hardware.

- http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-540-34258-8

Trying not to repeat others. Since you sound like you're interested in "learning from the past":

- The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks

- Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers

- Apple Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface

- The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball

There is an amazing book on cryptography that explains the core concepts through the age of the technology. It was a really insightful read and I learned a lot about the history of computing at the same time.

Would you mind providing a name/ISBN/url for this amazing book?

Yep, sorry I wasn't at my computer when I posted the message. Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy-Cryptography...

for a compilation of lesser known "fun facts" on computing pioneers there is http://valbonne-consulting.com/computing-pioneers/

for classic papers check http://blog.valbonne-consulting.com/2014/06/09/an-incomplete...

This is where apprenticeship helps a lot. Books,videos, code, everything is good - but learning it from somebody who has been there and done that, is most enlightening.

2nd @grosales:

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal. Absolutely fantastic read.

I enjoy the writings of Richard P. Gabriel. "Patterns of Software" is a good place to start.

Triumph of the Nerds is a very thorough PBS series that covers the beginning through around 1995.

also to get a feel what the computing business and mood was was during the early 80ies I highly recommend "halt and catch fire" - it is fiction but perfectly captures the Zeitgeist of early innovation and competition against IBM

How about these boring specifications like language specifications, OS changelogs?

Time to show my age here!

Others have listed some great, entertaining reads already:

Hackers,

Soul Of A New Machine (which won a Pulitzer),

Cringley's PBS series Triumph Of The Nerds (available on YouTube),

Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Some not mentioned so far (as I write):

The ancient, online Jargon File is a large glossary that captures a lot of early computer subculture through its lexicon. Eric S. Raymond maintains it today, but it originated way back in the 1970s: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/

"American Experience," on PBS, did a stellar documentary on the origins of Silicon Valley and the pervasive startup mentality there. It's all about the rise of the semiconductor industry, starting with transistors. Watch online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/

Dropping LSD was, it turns out, crucial to the origins of personal computing! This I learned from Jaron Lanier and Kevin Kelly, who recommended John Markoff's What The Dormouse Said: http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Personal-Computer-e...

The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer is a short book but also a fun read. Doron Swade, technology historian and assistant director of London's Science Museum, races to build a copy of Charles Babbage's "difference engine" before the anniversary of said machine; he tells his travails in building it while giving Charles Babbage's story at the same time: http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Engine-Charles-Babbage-Comp...

No one has mentioned books covering the dark side of hacking. There are some great reads out there, and infosec is a crucial part of computer history.

CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier covers Kevin Mitnick, the Chaos Computer Club, and Robert Tappin Morris (who, somewhat inadvertently, wrote the first Internet worm). Mitnick disputes his section of the book, but it's fascinating nonetheless. Worth it for the Morris part alone: http://www.amazon.com/CYBERPUNK-Outlaws-Hackers-Computer-Fro...

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll is a fun read. Stoll is an astronomer by trade, and his analytical thinking can be an inspiration: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Espionage/dp/...

The Watchman is a true crime thriller you won't be able to put down. The author set out to write a book on Mitnick but wound up detouring to do a story on Kevin Poulsen, who is now an excellent infosec writer at Wired. You will not believe what Poulsen does in this book. http://www.amazon.com/Watchman-Twisted-Crimes-Serial-Poulsen...

The Hacker Crackdown by acclaimed sci fi author Bruce Sterling is a great work on an infamous cross-country bust of many hackers. You'll get a look into the BBS subculture, Phrack Magazine, and the phreaker scene. http://www.amazon.com/Hacker-Crackdown-Disorder-Electronic-F...?

And let's not forget gaming:

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture gives a great history of ID Software and the origins of the FPS: http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...

The oral histories are fantastic and authoritative.

I've been really interested in early-80s to present PC history recently. There's actually a fair amount archived on it, but you'll sometimes have to approach things from the point of view of a historian rather than just a reader of history. My recent bent has been studying Atari, but there's lots of other resources available if you look. For whatever reason, videogames seem to have the lions share of work being done right now. I'd say that the archival and research phase is currently happening right now, with histories finally starting to be really written.

For anybody interested in business (like the HN readership) I really recommend studying not only about the history of Apple, but the history of its early competitor Atari. Equally as interesting and represents a kind of alternate universe where the Google of its time failed spectacularly. The reasons why are complex and very informative, especially the Tramiel years.

Some samples:

There's not many books looking back, but there are a few and they're quite good:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Was-Here-Commodore/dp/02620...

http://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Complete-History-eb...

http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Fall-Commodore/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/14516485...

Classic magazines:

https://archive.org/details/computermagazines

There's also plenty of old shows both archived, and made more recently, some with a stunning number of important interviews

https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Dr+Sparkle...

https://archive.org/details/thescreensavers

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrGameSack

https://www.youtube.com/user/tezzaNZ

https://www.youtube.com/user/blacklily8

And there's a vast retrogaming/retrocomputing podcasting phenomenon going on right now, often with even more amazing interviews

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/

http://www.retronauts.com/

and a larger list https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8544576

What's nice is that this all happened recently enough that you can actually go to the primary sources and read/listen/talk with these events as they happened, but can now look back informed by decades of the aftereffects.

http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/

If you can get to Silicon Valley, go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

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