Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe (Penguin Press Science) eBook: George Dyson: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Formats

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle Edition

�5.99

Hardcover

�20.00

Paperback

�6.89

Audio, CD, Audiobook

�30.95

Unknown Binding

Audio Download, Unabridged

�19.27

or Free with Audible.co.uk 30-day free trial

Product Description

Review

A wise and meticulously researched account of a vital period in our technological history, peopled by remarkable characters painted in the round (Peter Forbes Independent )

Fascinating . . . the story Dyson tells is intensely human, a tale of teamwork over many years and all the harmonies and rows that involves (Jenny Uglow )

This wide-ranging and lyrical work is an important addition to the literature of the history of computing (Economist )

A beautiful example of technological storytelling . . . much more than a chronicle of engineering progress: it includes fascinating digressions into the history and physics of nuclear weapons, the fundamentals of mathematical logic, the mathematical insights of Hobbes and Leibniz, the history of weather forecasting, Nils Barricelli's pioneering work on artificial life and lots of other interesting stuff (John Naughton Observer )

It is a joy to read George Dyson's revelation of the very human story of the invention of the electronic computer, which he tells with wit, authority, and insight. Read Turing's Cathedral as both the origin story of our digital universe and as a preceptive glimpse into its future (W. Daniel Hillis )

At long last George Dyson delivers the untold story of software's creation. It is an amazing tale brilliantly deciphered (Kevin Kelly )

The world he re-creates will enthral scientific romantics . . . an entertaining starting point for anyone wanting to understand how Turing's astonishing ideas became a reality, and how they continue to shape the world we live in today (The Sunday Times )

An engrossing and well-researched book that recounts an important chapter in the history of 20th-century computing (Evgeny Morozov Observer )

Rich in historical insight . . . a timely reminder of why we should care about computers and the endless possibilities they hold (The Times )

Review

A wise and meticulously researched account of a vital period in our technological history, peopled by remarkable characters painted in the round -- Peter Forbes Independent Fascinating ... the story Dyson tells is intensely human, a tale of teamwork over many years and all the harmonies and rows that involves -- Jenny Uglow This wide-ranging and lyrical work is an important addition to the literature of the history of computing Economist A beautiful example of technological storytelling ... much more than a chronicle of engineering progress: it includes fascinating digressions into the history and physics of nuclear weapons, the fundamentals of mathematical logic, the mathematical insights of Hobbes and Leibniz, the history of weather forecasting, Nils Barricelli's pioneering work on artificial life and lots of other interesting stuff -- John Naughton Observer It is a joy to read George Dyson's revelation of the very human story of the invention of the electronic computer, which he tells with wit, authority, and insight. Read Turing's Cathedral as both the origin story of our digital universe and as a preceptive glimpse into its future -- W. Daniel Hillis At long last George Dyson delivers the untold story of software's creation. It is an amazing tale brilliantly deciphered -- Kevin Kelly The world he re-creates will enthral scientific romantics ... an entertaining starting point for anyone wanting to understand how Turing's astonishing ideas became a reality, and how they continue to shape the world we live in today The Sunday Times An engrossing and well-researched book that recounts an important chapter in the history of 20th-century computing -- Evgeny Morozov Observer Rich in historical insight ... a timely reminder of why we should care about computers and the endless possibilities they hold The Times

See all Product Description

Product details

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 2349 KB
Print Length: 432 pages
Publisher: Penguin (1 Mar 2012)
Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.� r.l.
Language: English
ASIN: B0076O2VXM
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray: Not Enabled

Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #77,132 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #91 in Kindle Store > Books > Nonfiction > Science > History & Philosophy

Would you like to give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Oh yes, I well remember the command line... 30 April 2012

By T. D. Dawson TOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

My first encounter with digital computers was in the late 1960s when I headed up a small design team working in the development of a computer-based remote control/telemetry system to replace the earlier electromagnetic/discrete component systems used by the public utilities. In the ensuing years - although I've occasionally tried - I've never managed to escape completely from the digital universe...

Because of - or perhaps in spite of - this background I found it extremely difficult to review George Dyson's book. The claim on the back cover that the book 'can be read as literature whether or not you have any interest in computers and machine intelligence' is, in my view, grossly misleading and dangerously inaccurate.

For example, we learn on page 301 that (verbatim) "the codes spawned in 1951 have proliferated, but their nature has not changed. They are symbiotic associations of self-reproducing numbers (starting with a primitive alphabet of order codes) that were granted limited, elemental powers, the way a limited alphabet of nucleotide sequences code for an elemental set of aminio acids - with polynucleotides, proteins, and everything else that follows developing from there."

This, I submit, is hardly something that can be read as literature. Although I have a reasonable scientific background I had similar difficulties with sections dealing with Monte Carlo statistical techniques, chaos theory in meteorology and with the theory of self-reproducing automata....

The research that Mr Dyson carried out in developing the various chapters is, of course, impressive but I would have found the book far more interesting and informative had he concentrated on developing the subject matter within a chronological timeline - and, even better, had he focused on explaining it rather than simply relying on extremely erudite statements. He also, and very obviously, found it difficult to decide whether to concentrate on:

1. tracing the development of the digital computer itself. If so, the material on the theory of Turing's Universal Machine should appear before page 243 whilst a summary of the prophetic work of Gottfried Leibniz at the end of the 17th century would be better located before pages 103 to 105. There is, admittedly, a large amount of information on the development of various digital components and storage techniques but, unfortunately, this is scattered throughout the book.

or on

2. examining the work of a number of eminent scientists and focusing on how, by applying the evolving digital technology to their research work, they influenced and contributed to the development of that technology. There is a large amount of interesting background information on the scientists themselves (and on the occasional clash of mercurial personalities) including such anecdotal gems as the hospital at Los Alamos charging one dollar a day for diapers. But...

The depth of material in 'Turing's Cathedral' is immense which - had it been the sole criteria - would have justified a five-star rating. However, the lack of a coherent timeline and his difficulty in dealing with highly complex scientific issues reduces my rating to a more than generous three stars.

In my opinion the 1953 book Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines gives a far better overview of developments prior to that date. That edition is, unfortunately, now out of print but 1955, 1957 and 1963 reprints are listed on Amazon. Out of interest the copy on my bookshelf contains, as a bookmark, a receipt dated 3rd December 1953 showing that it cost me �1:16s:3d...! Read more ›

Comment |

Was this review helpful to you?

Yes

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Much more than just Turing's contribution to computing 15 May 2012

By CatR

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Unlike other reviewers, I was not worried by the fact that this book is not another rehash of the same source material about Alan Turing. Setting his famous paper in some, maybe not the entire, context of the time was illuminating.

I skimmed sections that seemed dense in technical details of valves and command lines, but the stories of wives and women working on computer hardware and programmes, plus the vibrant "work hard, play hard" atmosphere in the various campus-type living arrangements were fascinating. Klari von Neumann's narrative was one of the most engaging for me. I also quite like stories of how institutions are shaped, so I wasn't put off by this strand.

A stand out comment related to the power of computer processing keeping men honest, because we've all seen how powerful computer models can be created and used dishonestly.

The Manchester University Small Scale Experimental Machine or Baby was repeatedly referred to in the same breath as Colossus and thus was a bit confusing. For instance "the core of the computing group from Bletchley Park were continuing from where their work on Colossus had left off". I (unlike the author who counts Max Newman as the core) imagine that the core of the computing group were the ones who actually designed and built the machine; Williams, Kilburn and Tootill who had all been based at the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern. It isn't the most straightforward of family trees, but these vague references don't help to give people their proper credits or to understand why things came about in the way they did.... Read more ›

Comment |

Was this review helpful to you?

Yes

48 of 54 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Misleading account 8 Mar 2012

By Jeremy E. May

Format:Hardcover

The focus of George Dyson's well-written, fascinating but essentially misleading book,'Turing's Cathedral', is curiously not on celebrated mathematician, code-breaker and computer theorist Alan Turing but on his equally gifted and innovative contemporary John von Neumann. Von Neumann, whose extraordinarily varied scientific activities included inter alia significant contributions to game theory, thermodynamics and nuclear physics, is especially associated with the early development of the electronic digital computer (i.e. the 'EDC'), an interest apparently sparked by reading Turing's seminal 1936 paper 'On Computational Numbers' which attempted to systematize and express in mathematical terminology the principles underlying a purely mechanical process of computation. Implicit in this article, but at a very theoretical level, was a recognition of the relevance of stored program processing (whereby a machine's instructions and data reside in the same memory), a concept emanating from the work of mid-Victorian computer pioneer Charles Babbage but which demanded a much later electronic environment for effective realization.

What Mr Dyson insufficiently emphasizes is that, despite a widespread and ever-growing influence on the mathematical community, Turing's paper was largely ignored by contemporary electronic engineers and had negligible overall impact on the early development of the EDC. Additionally, he omits to adequately point out that von Neumann's foray into the new science of electronic computers involved a virtual total dependence on the prior work, input and ongoing support of his engineering colleagues.... Invited in August 1944 to join the Moore School, University of Pennsylvania, team responsible for ENIAC, the world's first general purpose computer being built for the US Army, von Neumann was quickly brought up to speed courtesy of the machine's lead engineers, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. As early as the fall of 1943, Eckert and Mauchly had become seriously frustrated by the severe processing limitations imposed by ENIAC's design and were giving serious consideration to implementing major modifications, in particular the adoption of Eckert's own mercury delay line technology to boost the machine's miniscule memory capacity and enable a primitive stored-program capability. These proposals were subsequently vetoed by the School's authorities on the quite understandable grounds that they would seriously delay ENIAC's delivery date; instead it was decided to simultaneously begin research on a more advanced machine (i.e. EDVAC) to incorporate the latest developments. As a new member of the group, von Neumann speedily grasped the essentials of the new science and contributed valuable theoretical feedback, but an almost total lack of hands-on electronic expertise on his part prevented any serious contribution to the nuts and bolts of the project. Relations with Eckert and Mauchly rapidly deteriorated when an elegantly written, but very high-level, document of his entitled 'First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC' was circulated among the scientific community. Not only had this document not been previewed, let alone pre-approved, by Eckert and Mauchly, but it bore no acknowledgment whatsoever of their overwhelming responsibility for much of the content. By default, and in view too of his already very considerable international reputation, the content was therefore attributed exclusively to von Neumann, an impression he made no attempt thereafter to correct, the term 'Von Neumann Architecture' being subsequently bestowed on the stored program setup described in the document.

The public distribution of von Neumann's 'Draft' denied Eckert and Mauchly the opportunity to patent their technology. Worse still, despite academic precedents to the contrary, they were refused permission by the Moore School to proceed with EDVAC's development on a commercial basis. In spite of his own links to big business (he represented IBM as a consultant), von Neumann likewise opposed their efforts to do so. All this resulted in a major rift, von Neumann thereafter being shunned by Eckert and Mauchly and forced to rely on lesser mortals to help implement various stored-program projects, notably the IAS computer at Princeton. The following year (1946) Eckert and Mauchly left the School to focus on developing machines for the business market. Before doing so, they jointly delivered a series of state of the art lectures on ENIAC and EDVAC to an invited audience at the School. Among the attendees was British electronics engineer Maurice Wilkes, a fellow academic of Turing's from Cambridge University, but with relatively little interest in the latter's ongoing activity (by this time Turing, a great visionary, had also turned his attention to designing stored-program computers). Blown away by Eckert and Mauchly's presentation, Wilkes returned to England to forge ahead with a new machine called EDSAC, which was completed in May 1949 and represented the first truly viable example of a stored program computer (an experimental prototype christened 'Baby' had already been developed at Manchester University the year before). Back in the US, Eckert and Mauchly continued their efforts, but persistent problems with funding and also Eckert's own staunch refusal to compromise on quality delayed progress, their partnership finally culminating in the development of the UNIVAC 1, the world's first overtly business-oriented computer, delivered initially to the Census Bureau in March 1951.

Mr Dyson is quite right of course (and he does this well) to trace the beginnings of the modern computer to the stored program concept, but his obsessive focus on von Neumann's role obscures the impact of Eckert and Mauchly's vastly more significant contribution to its development. The triumph of the EDC depended almost wholly on the efforts and expertise of utterly dedicated and outstanding electronics specialists like them, not on mathematicians, logicians and generalists like von Neumann or even Turing. Never one to deny credit where it was due, Wilkes (who later spearheaded advances in software, became the doyen of Britain's electronic community and ended his long and distinguished career as professor emeritus of computer science at Cambridge) unceasingly acknowledged his major debt to Eckert and Mauchly. Hopefully, Mr Dyson, a writer of considerable talent, might one day decide to tell in full their story and set the record straight. Read more ›

4 Comments |

Was this review helpful to you?

Yes

Would you like to see more reviews about this item?

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 70 reviews 3.4 out of 5 stars

Were these reviews helpful? Let us know

Popular Highlights

�One cannot stumble on an idea unless one is running,� Zworykin advised those who &quote;

Highlighted by 4 Kindle users

Digital computers translate between these two forms of information�structure and sequence�according to definite rules. Bits that are embodied as structure (varying in space, invariant across time) we perceive as memory, and bits that are embodied as sequence (varying in time, invariant across space) we perceive as code. Gates are the intersections where bits span both worlds at the moments of transition from one instant to the next. &quote;

Highlighted by 3 Kindle users

In March of 1953 there were 53 kilobytes of high-speed random-access memory on planet Earth. &quote;

Highlighted by 3 Kindle users

Customer Discussions

This product's forum