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Other Books

Other books that discuss the history of computing include:

  • From Bits to Bitcoins, Mark Day
  • The Computer: A History, Mark Frauenfelder

Missing Milestones

Below is a list of milestones that readers think are “missing.” But if we put in these milestones, which ones would we have had to take out?

  • Guy Steele and Bernie Greenberg
  • Symbolics and the LISP machines
  • Macsyma or its successor Mathematica and Stephen Wolfram, which through curated databases and Wolfram Language represents really “computable knowledge.”
  • Ted Nelson and Xanadu, which was seminal if under-appreciated.
  • NeXT Computer, which NextStep was important as precursor to macOS, plus for a while it was the most important computer music platform, plus the original web prototype (via Tim Berners-Lee).
  • Steve Jobs’ 5 seminal contributions to the world: Mac, iPod, Pixar (partial credit), iPhone, iPad