Automatic Digital Computers.

£450 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books · No longer available

from the library of an eniac engineer First edition of an important early book on computing, scarcer than the US edition published later in the same year. This copy from the library of W. Barkley Fritz, a computing specialist who began his career working with ENIAC at the Ballistics Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, before joining Westinghouse and the computer science department at the University of Delaware. With his bookplate and a small number of pencilled notes. Author Maurice Wilkes (1913-2010) was one of the leading figures in British computing from the 1930s onward. Trained as a mathematician and physicist, he was one of the first staff members, and later served as director, of Cambridge's Mathematical Laboratory, which 'played a critical role in the development of the electronic digital computer'. Wilkes 'directed the design and construction of EDSAC, the first readily usable, full-scale, stored-program computer' and 'was responsible for a number of programming innovations, such as labels, macros, and microprogramming' (Hook Norman, Origins of Cyberspace 1013). First edition, first impression; 8vo; 8 plates from photographs, folding diagram, illustrations within the text, bookplate of W. Barkley Fritz, portion of jacket with blurb stapled to the front free endpaper, some associated tape residue, contents faintly toned; original buff cloth, titles to spine gilt, spine rolledand faded with some loss of the gilt titles, cloth rubbed along the edges with small

• Binding: Hardcover

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