Book description
What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries.
Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who’s ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines.
It’s a cleverly illustrated and eminently comprehensible story—and along the way, you’ll discover you’ve gained a real context for understanding today’s world of PCs, digital media, and the Internet. No matter what your level of technical savvy, CODE will charm you—and perhaps even awaken the technophile within.
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Preface
- Preface to the Paperback Edition
- 1. Best Friends
- 2. Codes and Combinations
- 3. Braille and Binary Codes
- 4. Anatomy of a Flashlight
- 5. Seeing Around Corners
- 6. Telegraphs and Relays
- 7. Our Ten Digits
- 8. Alternatives to Ten
- 9. Bit by Bit by Bit
- 10. Logic and Switches
- 11. Gates (Not Bill)
- 12. A Binary Adding Machine
- 13. But What About Subtraction?
- 14. Feedback and Flip-Flops
- 15. Bytes and Hex
- 16. An Assemblage of Memory
- 17. Automation
- 18. From Abaci to Chips
- 19. Two Classic Microprocessors
- 20. ASCII and a Cast of Characters
- 21. Get on the Bus
- 22. The Operating System
- 23. Fixed Point, Floating Point
- 24. Languages High and Low
- 25. The Graphical Revolution
- A. Acknowledgments
- B. Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
- Colophon
Product information
- Title: Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, First Edition
- Author(s):
- Release date: October 2000
- Publisher(s): Microsoft Press
- ISBN: 9780735634688
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