
IBM's Early Computers - tosh
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ibms-early-computers
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mrbill
This, and "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems" are two of my favorite computer-
related books. I wish other historical books were as thick and as thorough and
well-written.

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nn3
Seconded. They are both great books. Some really amazing stories in there,
like the development of the first hard drive.

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userbinator
If you're interested in documentation on early IBM computers, including the
rare 600/700 series, there is a ton of stuff here:
[http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/](http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/)

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dethswatch
I'm reading this book right now and it's glorious- it goes into a ton of
detail on the history and design of early mechanical punchcard tabulators,
sorters, multipliers, etc, in order to get you to the motivation to make it
all electronic, etc.

Highly recommend it.

Also- this "printing" is really more a xerox of the original- and the "print"
quality stinks. I got an older hardcover version off of amazon that was
actually typeset and much easier to read.

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killjoywashere
Clutch advise. I just bought the last old used copyin Amazon. For about half
the retail.

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khedoros1
Oh, cool. My grandfather's name is listed in the index.

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razakel
Why did you post a link to the overview of an out-of-print book? That's fairly
pointless.

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ljosa
If you found the overview interesting, you can get the book from the library.

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pedasmith
And the link directly takes you to a "how to buy". There are multiple copies
available. A bigger question is why we in the computer field let important
histories of our profession go out of print so quickly.

