More than most books, this one was a cooperative effort, and I am grateful to the dozens of people who helped me, whether with advice, photographs, or historical material. I can’t list all of their names here, but I would like to single out some of them for special mention.

I had the good fortune to work with an unusually dedicated and intelligent group of editors and designers at Ticknor & Fields and Houghton Mifflin. Every one of them gave above and beyond the call of duty: Katrina Kenison, my editor; Laurie Parsons, the photo researcher; Helena Bentz and Janice Byers, the manuscript editors; Cope Cumpston, the book designer; and Louise Noble, who designed the cover. Each one deserves a literary

distinguished-service cross with clusters for hard work, talent, and dedication.

Several people, knowledgeable about one or another period of the history of computers, read portions of the manuscript, and I am indebted to them. They were Arthur W. Burks, and his wife, Alice, both of whom worked on ENIAC; Paul E. Ceruzzi, an excellent historian and the author of Reckoners; Bill Fernandez, Apple’s first employee; Bruno Baron von Freytag Loringhoff, who reconstructed Schickard’s calculator; Forrest Mims III, one of the founders of MITS and a prolific writer on electronics and computers; A. C. Markkula, one of the founders of Apple Computer; and Allan Schiffman, an engineer for the Fairchild Camera & Instrument Corporation. I also read a portion of the manuscript over the phone to John Backus, the chief author of FORTRAN. If, despite all the advice I received, there are an y errors in the book, I am the one to blame.

The public relations business is often maligned and rarely praised, but almost all of the PR representatives with whom my photo researcher and I dealt were wonderfully helpful. I’d like to thank Erika Volger of Apple Computer; David R. Curry of Burroughs ; Stephen A. Kallis, Jr., of Digital ; John C. Reilly and Sue Ann Bailey of IBM; Howard High of Intel ; Edward L. Galvin of MITRE; R. K. Kramer of NCR; George Eager of Princeton University; Richard A. Mathisen of Prudential Insurance; Michael Maynard and Michael Heck of Sperry; Richard Perdue of Texas Instruments; and Francesca Chapman of the University of

Pennsylvania.

I am especially grateful to several photo archivists for their help: Mary E. Williams of the Bristol Record Office, who supplied us with the photographs of the Bristol rent rolls in Chapter 1; William J. Wisheart of the Computer Museum, Boston; Armand J. Dionne and Richard MacDonald of the Cruft Photographic Laboratory at Harvard; Jane Bradshaw, Jane S. M. Bowen, and Sue Mossman of the Science Museum, London, who patiently responded to our many photo orders; and Dr. Uta C. Mertzbach of the Smithsonian Institution, who answered our numerous requests for pictures.

Finally, I’d like to thank some of the people who helped me even though it wasn’t their jobs to do so: Geoffrey D. Austrian of IBM; Paul Bird, who obtained the color photos of the Pascaline; James Bybee, formerly of MITS; G. W. A. Dummer, who contributed the Tinkertoy and micromodule photos; I. Bernard Cohen of Harvard; Robert J. Deroski of Deroski Consolidated Enterprises, Cutchogue, New York, who took the color photo of the Antikythera mechanism; Bill Fernandez, who provided the shots of Apple’s first office; Harry J. Gray of the Moore School, who supplied the photos of EDVAC; Daniel Leeson of IBM; Forrest Mims III, who took the pictures of the Altair and the cover of Popular Electronics; Byron Phelps of IBM; Horst Salzwedel, who translated several German papers on Schickard for me; Keith W. Smillie of the University of Alberta; Charlotte Wilkes of the Dublin, Georgia, Courier Herald, who took the photo of Edward Roberts; and M. R. Williams of the University of Calgary.