A History of Modern Computing (review)
A. Fitzpatrick · Technology and Culture · 2001
The history of modern computing is an enormous field of inquiry that awaits all kinds of research. Paul Ceruzzi has taken a big step in A History of Modern Computing, a broad sweep concerned mainly with twentieth-century America. Computing means many different things--hardware, software, programming, business strategy, networks, people--and Ceruzzi successfully incorporates all of these into a single volume. He covers a lot of ground in a book of reasonable length, making it a very appropriate text, particularly for seminars in the history of technology and computing. This is a solid contribution to the history of technology, but it also falls under the category of business history. While it is obvious that the history of computing involves much more than hardware, Ceruzzi's presentation of computing as a story of commerce and industry is important: the postwar economy and competitive free market allowed the United States to lead the state of the art in computer technology, and it was due to the lack of such a system that the Soviet Union lagged far behind in computer development.