Calculating Instruments and Machines.

One of the first two books on modern computers. First edition, first printing of the lectures that were 'the first comprehensive exposition of electronic digital computing'. Uncommon in the dust jacket.

In addition to his significant contributions to ballistics and quantum theory, British mathematician Douglas Hartree (1897-1958) was a leader in efforts to automate scientific calculations. He was 'involved in the development of the digital electronic computer, which emerged from wartime attempts to automate calculation further... In 1946 Hartree's advice was sought in the application of the United States army's ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer) to the production of ballistic tables' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

The present volume is 'based upon a series of lectures delivered at the University of Illinois in 1948. These lectures were intended for a well-informed scientific audience outside the tiny group of professionals then involved with electronic computing. They represented the first comprehensive exposition of electronic digital computing, and this book was one of the first two treatises on the subject. The other book, Edmund Berkley's Giant Brains or Machines That Think was written for a more popular audience and achieved greater sales. Reflecting Hartree's English background, this book contained more information on the English machines than did Berkley's... Foremost among the digital machines discussed in Hartree's work are the Harvard Mark I and ENIAC. Chapter 8, entitled "Projects and Prospects", contains the first generally available comprehensive account of the stored-program machines then in development, including EDVAC, ACE, and EDSAC' (Hook & Norman, Origins of Cyberspace 652).

First edition, first printing; tall 4to; diagrams and monochrome illustrations from photographs throughout the text, inked out ownership inscription on the front free endpaper, endpapers toned; original red-orange cloth, titles to spine in black, cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities, a very good copy in the rubbed, chipped, and creased jacket; 138pp.

Hook & Norman, Origins of Cyberspace 652.