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Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers
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About Core Memory: A Visual Survey Of Vintage Computers
Product description An unprecedented combination of computer history and striking images, Core Memory reveals modern technology's evolution through the world's most renowned computer collection, the Computer History Museum in the Silicon Valley. Vivid photos capture these historically important machines including the Eniac, Crays 1 3, Apple I and II while authoritative text profiles each, telling the stories of their innovations and peculiarities. Thirty-five machines are profiled in over 100 extraordinary color photographs, making Core Memory a surprising addition to the library of photography collectors and the ultimate geek-chic gift Review FROM WIRED July 2007 Photographer Mark Richards elevates dusty computer artifacts to stunning objets d'art in his detailed new book, Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers.Don't let the academic title fool you -- this five-decade romp reads less like a history lesson and more like an ode to an old friend.Writer John Alderman captures the excitement of the book's 35 computers -- from the room-filling ENIAC to the Commodore 64 -- and reveals some of their quirks (the SAGE came with a built-in cigarette lighter and ashtray; the retired WISC was inadvertently hit by bullets). Alderman also revisits the early careers of several industry pioneers, including Bill Gates, who in 1975 wrote the programming language Altair BASIC with Paul Allen, and Steve Wozniak, who a year later failed to convince Hewlett-Packard to build a personal computer. In the end, the book -- with its crude yet beautiful images -- is a pleasing reminder of how far we've come and how far we have to go. NEW YORK TIMES July 2007 The best coffee table book I've seen this year may well be "Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers," with text by John Alderman and photos from Mark Richards. The images are, by and large, mind-blowing. Take the one above, of the guts of a UNIVAC I computer, put on the market by Remington-Rand in 1951. It may look like a "Monty Python"-esque torture device. But this thing was, Alderman points out, the first commercial computer sold in the United States. I'll let Alderman explain what we're looking at, though - warning - the geek factor is moderately high: For memory the UNIVAC used a huge mercury delay line - pictured here - and tape drives were used to store programs and data. To process information, the mercury delay line used sound waves to send pulses through a tube of mercury, then detect and return them. This memory tank would hold 18 such tubes. The use of tape, rather than punch cards, to store information was a significant innovation and one that was met with significant resistance from customers who would no longer see and hold data in hand, as they had with punch cards. Adding to the anxiety, salesmen from competitor IBM were said to have suggested that the spinning metal tape posed a safety hazard. The UNIVAC muscled its way into United States political history; it liked Ike. The UNIVAC garnered a lot of publicity when it was used to predict election results in 1952 from a small sample of voters in key states. It accurately predicted Eisenhower's landslide victory over Adlai Stevenson and helped further solidify the hopes and fears that the general public had about these wondrous but scary machines. SMITHSONIAN July 2007 Not long after photographer Mark Richards walked into the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California, he was smitten with the vintage adding machines, supercomputers and PCs. In this high-technology museum--home to Google's first production server and a 1951 Univac 1, America's first commercial computer--Richards saw more than engineering brilliance. He saw beauty. Richards' resulting still lifes have just been published in Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers, 150 strikingly w
