17 comments

  • jonjacky 5 days ago

    The standard textbooks by historians are:

    A History of Modern Computing by Paul Ceruzzi

    There is a completely rewritten version of this with an additional author:

    A New History of Modern Computing by Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi

    Also:

    Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray

    There are good books by journalists and popular writers. Favorites on HN are:

    The Dream Machine -- you are already reading this. Also:

    Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

    Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthey Lyon

    These and many many other books are recomended and described in this HN thread from a few years ago:

    Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22692281

    • BOOSTERHIDROGEN 4 days ago

      Are there any books about the semiconductor industry?

  • rfarley04 a day ago

    The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick

    It's a little zoomed out and more focused on information theory than computers, specifically, but the overlap is significant.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_...

  • syndicatedjelly 5 days ago

    Quick plug for my HN book club on that book! We just finished Ch 1 of The Dream Machine, if you’re interested in joining.

    https://discord.gg/9tgxgg3J

  • brudgers 4 days ago

    The Art of Computer Programming contains a lot of computing history.

    Also it is a lot of computing history.

  • wilburm 4 days ago

    Turing’s Cathedral

    The Universal Computer

    Computer Connections: https://computerhistory.org/blog/computer-history-museum-lic...

  • cafard 18 hours ago

    The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann by Herman Goldstine.

  • gaws 2 days ago

    The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

    • siamese_puff 2 days ago

      Good book. Can be a bit dry here and there, but fascinating

  • pasttense01 4 days ago

    Tracy Kidder.The Soul of a New Machine.

    About the development of the Data General new minicomputer. Published 1982.

  • croo 4 days ago

    Singh Simon - Code book is an excellent and fantastic read about the history of cryptography and provide insights of what really drove technical improvements in ww1 and 2.

  • netfortius 4 days ago

    Brian Kernighan's newly released "UNIX: A History and a Memoir"

  • tacostakohashi 5 days ago

    A Quarter Century of UNIX

    Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier

  • helph67 5 days ago

    Fire in the Valley - The making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine, published by McGraw Hill, 2000 463 pages. Excellent reference telling many of the P.C stories.

  • aristofun 5 days ago

    Dealers of lightning about Xerox parc is quite impressive

  • bwh2 4 days ago

    Two good ones: 1) Where Wizards Stay Up Late and 2) How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

  • dark__paladin 3 days ago

    Chip War - Chris Miller