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From the I Ching to AI, tremendous human brainpower has been devoted to devising easier means of counting and thinking. Former math teacher Georges Ifrah has devoted his life to tracking down traces of our early calculating tools and reporting on them with charm and verve. The Universal History of Computing: From the Abacus to Quantum Computing gives a grand title to a grand subject, and Ifrah makes good on his promise of universality by leaping far back in time and spanning all of the inhabited continents. If his scope is vast, his stories and details are still engrossing. Readers will hang on to the stories of 19th-century inventors who converged on multiplication machines and other, more general "engines," and better understand the roots of biological and quantum computation. Ifrah has great respect for our ancestors and their work, and he transmits this feeling to his readers with humor and humility. His timelines, diagrams, and concordance help the reader who might be unfamiliar with foreign concepts of numbers and computation keep up with his narrative. By the end, his slight bias against strong artificial intelligence comes through, but he is careful to acknowledge the future's unforeseeable nature and suggest that we keep our minds open. How can we resist? --Rob Lightner
Book Description
A brilliant follow-up to a landmark international bestseller
"Suppose every instrument could by command or by anticipation of need execute its function on its own; suppose that spindles could weave of their own accord, and plectra strike the strings of zithers by themselves; then craftsmen would have no need of hand-work, and masters have no need of slaves." -Aristotle Called the Indiana Jones of arithmetic, Georges Ifrah embarked in 1974 on a ten-year quest to discover where numbers come from and what they say about us. His first book, the highly praised Universal History of Numbers, drew from this remarkable journey, presented the first complete account of the invention and evolution of numbers the world over-and became an international bestseller. In The Universal History of Computing, Ifrah continues his exhilarating exploration into the fascinating world of numbers. In this fun, engaging but no less learned book, he traces the development of computing from the invention of the abacus to the creation of the binary system three centuries ago to the incredible conceptual, scientific, and technical achievements that made the first modern computers possible. He shows us how various cultures, scientists, and industries across the world struggled to break free of the tedious labor of mental calculation and, as a result, he reveals the evolution of the human mind. Evoking the excitement and joy that accompanied the grand mathematical undertakings throughout history, Ifrah takes us along as he revisits a multitude of cultures, from Roman times and the Chinese Common Era to twentieth-century England and America. We meet mathematicians, visionaries, philosophers, and scholars from every corner of the world and from every period of history. We witness the dead ends and regressions in the computer's development, as well as the advances and illuminating discoveries. We learn about the births of the pocket calculator, the adding machine, the cash register, and even automata. We find out how the origins of the computer can be found in the European Renaissance, along with how World War II influenced the development of analytical calculation. And we explore such hot topics as numerical codes and the recent discovery of new kinds of number systems, such as "surreal" numbers. Adventurous and enthralling, The Universal History of Computing is an astonishing achievement that not only unravels the epic tale of computing, but also tells the compelling story of human intelligence-and how much farther we still have to go.
GEORGES IFRAH is an independent scholar and former math teacher. E. F. Harding, the primary translator, is a statistician and mathematician who has taught at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Cambridge Universities. SOPHIE WOOD, cotranslator, is a specialist in technical translation from French. Ian Monk, cotranslator, has translated the works of Georges Perec and Daniel Pennac. ELIZABETH CLEGG, cotranslator, is also an interpreter who has worked on a number of government and international agency projects. Guido Waldman, cotranslator, has translated several classic literary works.
In this engaging successor to The Universal History of Numbers, you'll discover the entire story of the calculation of yesteryear and the computation of today. From the invention of the abacus to the creation of the binary system three centuries ago to the conceptual, scientific, and technical achievements that made the earliest computers possible, highly acclaimed author and mathematician Georges Ifrah provides an illuminating glimpse into humankind's greatest intellectual tale: the story of computing.
PRAISE FOR GEORGES IFRAH'S The Universal History of Numbers
"Georges Ifrah is the man. This book, quite simply, rules. . . . It is outstanding . . . a mind-boggling and enriching experience." -The Guardian (London)
"Monumental . . . a fascinating journey taking us through many different cultures."-The Times (London)
"Ifrah's book amazes and fascinates by the scope of its scholarship. It is nothing less than the history of the human race told through figures."-International Herald Tribune
"Dazzling."-Kirkus Reviews
"Sure to transfix readers."-Publishers Weekly
Customer Reviews:
A Philosophical Approach.......2007-01-09
If you have been looking for a more academic approach to the history of computing then this is the book for you.
The book is divided into three parts. Part One contains a very comprehensive taxonomy/chronology showing the evolution of human number systems.
Part Two is where you will find the core "History of Computing" bit: tables, logarithms, analogue/digital, mechanical calculators, automatic calculation, electronic machines etc. It also includes an interleaved, and detailed, explanation of how computing has evolved from basic number crunching into abstract information processing.
Part Three reads like a long philosophical conclusion and contains some excellent material on ethics and artificial intelligence.
It starts with the development of efficient notation.......2004-02-18
Until recently, the history of computing has tended to be tied to the goals of mathematicians, as they struggled to keep up with the increasing demands of a society growing more technical. As nations began to trade with other nations, the necessity of performing computations on larger numbers very quickly forced changes in the notation. When first introduced into Europe, the modern decimal system of notation was greeted with skepticism and some hostility. However, as is nearly always the case in human endeavors, it was accepted rather quickly, as it was so much more efficient than other systems such as Roman numerals. Therefore, the history of computing devices is bound very tightly with improvements in representation, and the historical changes in notation are the topic of the first section of the book.
Ifrah does an excellent job in recapitulating the history of the notation of computation, covering the entire world, ending up with the modern notation and the efficiency of binary numbers. Nearly forty pages are devoted to explanations of many ancient numerical notations, and many figures are included. It is this approach that differentiates this book from other histories of computing. Other authors concentrate on the history of the evolving architectures of the computing devices, ignoring the necessary precondition of a compact and efficient notation. It is very difficult to imagine computing devices that could easily perform arithmetic on Roman numerals.
The second section is a two track treatment of the development of computing devices. One track covers the mathematical preliminaries and the second the mechanical advances that led to the construction of accurate computers. Most of the early improvements were done by mathematicians, and it was not until the late nineteenth century that governments started to be interested in computers. The primary event was the work of Charles Babbage, who showed that computers were possible and how valuable they could be in performing routine computations that were highly prone to error.
In many ways, this history of computing is more a history of the requisite mathematics rather than a history of hardware. This is a second way in which this book differs from other histories. One of the reasons why computers have improved so quickly is that much of the theoretical background for their actions were developed before the machines were. Ifrah explains that in great detail, describing how some of the principles of abstract mathematics have been applied to the building of computers.
The final section is very small and deals with the future of computing. This is a wise move, as this book is a history and one thing we have learned from the recent history of computers is that predicting the future is largely impossible. We know that they will get faster, have more memory and the usage will increase, but the consequences of this are difficult to predict.
If your interest is in the preconditions necessary for computers to be widely used, then this is the book for you. Ifrah covers all of the notational and mathematical background necessary for computers to be useful, for without that, they would probably have been little more than intellectual toys.
Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, preprinted with permission.
Methodical history but a little dry.......2002-02-01
I would have expected from the title that this book might have started in the 1940s (or at the earliest with Babbage and the Difference Engine) and told the story of the development of computers from there. No, as the subtitle indicates, this book goes way back. In fact, the first section is a summary of number systems going back to the age of the Egyptians and before. It's a very methodical and somewhat dry tale, not helped by being translated from the French by translators who feel compelled to insert their own comments at intervals.
When it does get going, it provides a history of the relevant mathematics as well as automata from the Islamic era forward. The actual computer era is touched on mostly in its early stages, with the first computers of the forties and fifties. And it concludes with about sixty pages that have nothing to do with history but rather attempt to define key words such as "information" and "computer."
All in all, it is a methodical and thorough book, perhaps a little dry but not as much as some books I have read. The author muses on the implications of various stages of discovery rather than simply relating the facts (and the translators chime in as well), which enlivens the story. Still, this book is probably for the more interested rather than the casual reader.
The Universal History of Computing : From the Abacus to.......2002-01-11
This book is really fascinating, especially if you are interested in scientific and technical achievements. Read this book and you'll find out how the computer can be traced to the Renaissance, and how Word War II influenced the development of analytical calculation. The epic tale of computing comes to life in these pages.
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Disappearing Architecture: From Real to Virtual to Quantum
Aaron Betsky ,
Ole Bouman ,
David Deutsch ,
Elizabeth Diller/Ricardo Scofidio ,
Monika Fleischmann/Wolfgang Strauss ,
Sulan Kolatan/William Mac Donald ,
William J. Mitchell ,
Kas Oosterhuis ,
Hani Rashid ,
Jeffrey Shaw ,
Peter Weibel , and
Peter Zoller
Manufacturer: Birkhäuser Basel
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Book Description
The creation of new environments through the use of developments in Information Technology is significantly altering not only architecture itself but also the roles and tasks of the architects. Architecture can no longer be described in the terms we are familiar with since it no longer corresponds to the form of architecture as we know it: an inclusive and exclusive structure, clearly defined, with a single interior and a single exterior. For architects, the challenge of the future will increasingly lie in creatively coming to terms with hybrid environments, understanding and exploiting the design potential of digital spaces within the physical world, and redefining the role of architecture within a visually dominated culture. This volume presents a valuable and attractive contribution to the contemporary discussion on this subject.
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Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering: 26th International Workshop on Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods ... / Mathematical and Statistical Phsyics)
Manufacturer: American Institute of Physics
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ASIN: 0735403716 |
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All papers have been peer-reviewed. The MaxEnt workshops are devoted to Bayesian inference and maximum entropy methods in science and engineering. In addition, this workshop included all aspects of probabilistic inference, such as foundations, techniques, algorithms, and applications. Specific topics included are: information theory; probability theory; quantum systems; source separation; information geometry; Bayesian networks, parametric and non-parametric Bayesian data and image processing; Bayesian computation; entropy computation of Markovian and semi-Markovian processes.
Book Description
Nanoelectronics provides an accessible introduction for prospective and practicing electronic engineers, computer scientists and physicists. The overview covers all aspects from underlying technologies to circuits and systems. The challenge of nanoelectronics is not only to manufacture minute structures but also to develop innovative systems for effective integration of the billions of devices. On the system level, various architectures are presented and important features of systems, such as design strategies, processing power, and reliability are discussed. Many specific technologies are presented, including molecular devices, quantum electronic devices, resonant tunnelling devices, single electron devices, superconducting devices, and even devices for DNA and quantum computing. The book also compares these devices with current silicon technologies and discusses limits of electronics and the future of nanosystems.
Customer Reviews:
reasonable extrapolations of new systems.......2006-03-16
Goser provides an interdisciplinary foray into nanosystems. Ideally, if your background is materials science, engineering or physics, you can pick up some ideas from the text. The physics details are not too abstruse to turn away an engineering reader.
Many of the designs described involve quantum mechanical effects. Quantum wires and dots, for example, that might have novel uses. Attention is also paid to how the new systems might be made. Not just as research efforts, but as practical outputs of a fab.
There is speculation about future systems, as indeed you would expect. But commendably restrained. The extrapolations seem reasonable, given our current abilities.
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Data Visualization in the Molecular Sciences: Tools for Insight and Innovation
Jack E. Bowie
Manufacturer: Addison Wesley Longman
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Machines, Computations, and Universality: 5th International Conference, MCU 2007, Orleans, France, September 10-13, 2007, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)
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ASIN: 3540745920 |
Book Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Machines, Computations, and Universality, MCU 2007, held in Orleans, France, September 10-13, 2007.
The 18 revised full papers presented together with 9 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected. The topics include Turing machines, register machines, word processing, cellular automata, tiling of the plane, neural networks, molecular computations, BSS machines, infinite cellular automata, real machines, and quantum computing.
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NMR Quantum Information Processing
Ivan Oliveira ,
Roberto Sarthour Jr. ,
Tito Bonagamba ,
Eduardo Azevedo , and
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Manufacturer: Elsevier Science
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ASIN: 0444527826 |
Book Description
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information (QIP) deals with the identification and use of quantum resources for information processing. This includes three main branches of investigation: quantum algorithm design, quantum simulation and
quantum communication, including quantum cryptography. Along the past few years, QIP has become one of the most active area of
research in both, theoretical and experimental physics, attracting students and researchers fascinated, not only by the potential
practical applications of quantum computers, but also by the possibility of studying fundamental physics at the deepest level of quantum phenomena.
NMR Quantum Computation and Quantum Information Processing describes the fundamentals of NMR QIP, and the main developments which can lead to a large-scale quantum processor.
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the interesting topic of the physics of computation. The very first ideas which sparkled the development of QIP came from basic considerations of the physical processes underlying computational actions. In Chapter 2 it is made an introduction to NMR, including the hardware and other experimental aspects of the technique. In
Chapter 3 we revise the fundamentals of Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. The chapter is very much based on the extraordinary book of Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang, with
an upgrade containing some of the latest developments, such as QIP in phase space, and telecloning. Chapter 4 describes how NMR
generates quantum logic gates from radiofrequency pulses, upon which quantum protocols are built. It also describes the important technique of Quantum State Tomography for both, quadrupole and spin
1/2 nuclei. Chapter 5 describes some of the main experiments of quantum algorithm implementation by NMR, quantum simulation and QIP in phase space. The important issue of entanglement in NMR QIP
experiments is discussed in Chapter 6. This has been a particularly exciting topic in the literature. The chapter contains a discussion
on the theoretical aspects of NMR entanglement, as well as some of the main experiments where this phenomenon is reported. Finally, Chapter 7 is an attempt to address the future of NMR QIP, based in
very recent developments in nanofabrication and single-spin detection experiments. Each chapter is followed by a number of problems and solutions.
* Presents a large number of problems with solutions, ideal for students
* Brings together topics in different areas: NMR, nanotechnology, quantum computation
* Extensive references
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Parallelism, Learning, Evolution: Workshop on Evolutionary Models and Strategies, Neubiberg, Germany, March 10-11, 1989. Workshop on Parallel Processing: ... (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 3540550275 |
Book Description
This volume presents the proceedings of a workshop on evolutionary models and strategies and another workshop on parallel processing, logic, organization, and technology, both held in Germany in 1989. In the search for new concepts relevant for parallel and distributed processing, the workshop on parallel processing included papers on aspects of space and time, representations of systems, non-Boolean logics, metrics, dynamics and structure, and superposition and uncertainties. The point was stressed that distributed representations of information may share features with quantum physics, such as the superposition principle and the uncertainty relations. Much of the volume contains material on general parallel processing machines, neural networks, and system-theoretic aspects. The material on evolutionary strategies is included because these strategies will yield important and powerful applications for parallel processing machines, and open the wayto new problem classes to be treated by computers.
Book Description
Scientists in optics are increasingly confronted with problems that are of a random nature and that require a working knowledge of probability and statistics for their solution. This textbook develops these subjects within the context of optics using a problem-solving approach. All methods are explicitly derived and can be traced back to three simple axioms given at the outset. Students with some previous exposure to Fourier optics or linear theory will find the material particularly absorbing and easy to understand.
This third edition contains many new applications to optical and physical phenomena. This includes a method of estimating probability laws exactly, by regarding them as laws of physics to be determined using a new variational principle.
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