Sunday, April 23, 2006

 

Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer

Picked up a great book from Ebay called Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer. Stan Veit started the first computer store in New York City called the Computer Mart, and used to write columns for the Computer Shopper magazine. The book covers all the original machines including Altairs, Imsai, SWTPC, Apple, Cromemco, SOL, TRS-80, and many more. The writing style is clear, and it adopts a nice friendly tone. Many photos of vintage machines and ads from old magazines and catalogs are included.

Other favorite books on this topic include Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, an excellent detailed look at the development of the PC; Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy, an attempt to dispell the negative connotations of the term hacker; and Collectible Microcomputers by Michael Nadeau, a true collectors guide to the many wonderful personal computers that before the onslaught of the PC clones.

Another favorite book is A History of Modern Computing : Second Edition by Paul E. Ceruzzi, a detailed history starting with the development of the ENIAC near the end of World War II. If you're interested in retro-computing, you should definitely seek out one or more of these titles.

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