Secret-computer-history
By Tamás T. Dénes
In the title, according to
the topic, one can read various hidden messages. If you play around with the
grouping of the three words, joined together by dashes, you might get different
results. If you read ‘Secret-computer history’, you are equally right to the
ones who read ‘Secret computer-history’.
The very purpose of this
book is to reveal the secret chain of events in the history of computers. Some
of these events had happened prior to the well known Neumann-computers and also
parallel to it. They were progressing behind the scenes, sometimes in
connection with the science of code breaking - cryptology. This connection with
the secret services might be a reason why they remained hidden, up until the
end of the 20th century.
Within the pages of this
book you can find out about this secret history of computers that could have
completely changed the way we view computers all around the world.
The contents of the book are
based on -by now- familiar facts. Yet, it is equally fascinating to imagine
what it could have been like if the secret history had become reality. If, in
the Silicon Valley, D.N. Lehmer and his son D.H. Lehmer’s pre-historic
construction or A. Turing’s really first computer of the world had taken over
the world’s biggest branch of industry. What could be the technological limits
of a parallel structured computer? How far would artificial and natural
intelligence be from one another?
What makes the publishing of
this book even more justified is the 210th anniversary of Charles Babbage’s
birth, the 90th anniversary of Alan M. Turing’s birth in 2002; the 380th
anniversary of Blaise Pascal’s, the 100th anniversary of Janos Neumann’s birth
in 2003 and the 110th anniversary of Norbert Wiener’s birth in 2004.
These jigsaw pieces help us
understand the vitally valuable work of these intellectual giants that had an
answer to the 20th century’s challenges. The book makes an (unachievable)
attempt to carve a ‘holographic statue’ in respect of these giants.
