IEE History of Technology Series no. 26 [Book Review]

This book is an annotated catalog of a collection of books, papers, and other materials gathered by one of the authors, Jeremy Norman. It begins with a 60-page introduction that explains how the authors came to compile this volume and their difficulties in attacking a subject that at once eludes easy definition and is in constant flux. I suspect that they set out to catalog a collection of rare books that they, perhaps, intended to sell. Along the way, however, a fascination with the subject material captured them and took control of their effort. The authors speak of writing numerous revisions of the introduction and other materials. They also note how they enlisted the help of Michael R. Williams, a former Annals editor in chief, to help with organizing and making sense of the material. Several articles in Annals, including some from a recent issue devoted to the Tomashs’ contributions to the history of computing (vol. 23, no. 4), have dealt at length on the issues of organizing this subject. Part of these difficulties stem from the universality of the stored program computer, a quality that has made cybernetics, in the words of W. David Lewis of Auburn University, the “universal solvent” of the modern age. Further difficulties stem from the rapid transformation of the field as computing machines became smaller and cheaper, embedded into other machines, and subsumed under communications devices connected to the Internet and other telecommunications devices. The authors acknowledge all these challenges. As book collectors and dealers, they are also concerned with the increasing dissemination of information electronically and the implied end of book publishing as it has been known for centuries. Likening the advent of electronic publishing to the advent of printing using movable type in the 15th century, they suggest that what they are cataloging are the “incunabula” of cyberspace: works published in traditional print form or otherwise on paper, about a technology that ultimately will render such publications all but extinct. The body of this book contains six chapters in which items listed include sometimes brief, at other times lengthy, annotations. Most Annals readers will have no problem with how the author divided “cyberspace” into chapters, except for the final one, on J. Presper Eckert (titled “Coinventor of the Stored Program Electronic Computer and Cofounder of the Electronic Computer Industry: Development of ENIAC, EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC”). That chapter is there for a particular reason, namely that Norman has amassed a fairly extensive and detailed collected of Eckert’s papers and memorabilia, mainly from an auction held by Eckert’s family members a few years ago. Many of these items are not available in a traditional library on the history of computing, but we can be grateful that the materials have been preserved. It is hard to judge this book’s value for historians who are not also avid book collectors. I found many of the items interesting and the annotations well written (although some are better than others). The narrative material that sets this collection in context goes over themes that have been discussed at length in the scholarly literature, and perhaps that is a better place for such material. Still, I enjoyed sharing with the authors their attempts to organize the subject of “cyberspace,” and as one who has struggled, and failed, to do so myself, I am reluctant to criticize another’s efforts. Paul E. Ceruzzi National Air and Space Museum paul.ceruzzi@nasm.si.edu