Last night I finished reading the book ‘Engines of Logic: Mathematicians and the Origin of the Computer’ by Martin Davis. This book is about the history of logic and describes how some of the prominent people and their ideas paved the way for today’s computers.
It traces the development of the computer through the life and work of logicians/mathematicians like Gottfried Leibniz, George Boole, David Hilbert, Georg Cantor, Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing and John von Neumann. It’s not a history of computing devices although of course some of these things come up.
It’s an excellent book, and a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the concepts upon which our everyday computers are based.
By the way, the same book was also published as ‘The Universal Computer. The Road from Leibniz to Turing’.
Because i’m aware of the positive impact a new post on your website has on you, hereby a little message from your little brother.
Although i don’t understand one single word of the preceding scientific and mathematical remarks, (i just watch the little ball in that motion thingy…) you do have a very nice website.