Daily Reading (26 April 2015)

[nanila]

What have you been reading today? Everything counts, from a novel-length fic to the labels on your washing!

Comments

[thamesynne]

Most notably: a personal history of various ancient computers, particularly the English Electric KDF9, by Bill Findlay. I'm always struck by how far ahead of the curve the British have always been with computer architecture, yet how little we've capitalised on it.

[nanila]

This reminds me of a book I read by Georgina Ferry: A computer called LEO: Lyons Teashops and the world’s first office computer. I picked it up because I so enjoyed her biography of Dorothy Hodgkin, and I remember it made me sad when the creative drive that produced LEO fizzled.

[thamesynne]

Ooh, I'll have to look out for that. And that reminds me, in turn, of two more books - Simon Lavington's "Early British Computers", which I first read when I was still at school and found it in my local library, although it's a little on the perfunctorily technical side; and Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine", which described the same kind of temporary unification of creative talent, and similarly made me feel sad when it fell apart.