Manufacturing computers in series was quite a feat in the 1950s. As mathematical as it gets, the machines discussed here were called X1 and X8. The industrial achievement combined with the background in a mathematical research center made the company Electrologica a legend in Dutch computing. The tales in this book are told by those who have a right to tell. Highly engaged professionals take readers back to their pioneering work with the machines and in retrospect unveil some of the values, which went without saying in the 1960s. To disagree, Paul Klint relates the contrasting views on software in Dutch research traditions. ALGOL culture: Frans Kruseman Aretz takes the reader along to the detailed decisions on constructing compilers and shows the values of an ALGOL culture transpiring. Signposts: Dirk Dekker for the first time ‘owns’ his algorithm for mutual exclusion. In particle physics: René van Dantzig’s use case was an Electrologica X8 computer controlling two other computers in three-dimensional detection of colliding particles. Early steps in AI: Lambert Meertens’ tale of the X8 machine composing a violin quartet comes with his original presentation, as well as the code in ALGOL 60. The reflections of first hand experiences combine well with the second thoughts of historical research into archival sources. Historians Huub de Beer and Gerard Alberts offer a view into the boardrooms of the local enterprise Electrologica, and of the electronics multinational Philips. Where pioneers and historians meet in an inspiring dialogue, the reader gains a view on the often implicit decisions constituting the field. Fortuitously, a copy of the X8 was retrieved from Kiel, Germany, and put on display at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden. Sparked by the very material presence of an X8, the present book takes stock of the state of historiography of Electrologica. Gerard Alberts is an associate professor in History of Digital Cultures, retired from the University of Amsterdam. Jan Friso Groote is a full professor of Formal Methods at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Electronic Value Exchange examines in detail the transformation of the VISA electronic payment system from a collection of non-integrated, localized, paper-based bank credit card programs into the cooperative, global, electronic value exchange network it is today. Topics and features: provides a history of the VISA system from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s; presents a historical narrative based on research gathered from personal documents and interviews with key actors; investigates, for the first time, both the technological and social infrastructures necessary for the VISA system to operate; supplies a detailed case study, highlighting the mutual shaping of technology and social relations, and the influence that earlier information processing practices have on the way firms adopt computers and telecommunications; examines how “gateways” in transactional networks can reinforce or undermine established social boundaries, and reviews the establishment of trust in new payment devices.

The Second Edition of this best-selling introductory operating systems text is the only textbook that successfully balances theory and practice. The authors accomplish this important goal by first covering all the fundamental operating systems concepts such as processes, interprocess communication, input/output, virtual memory, file systems, and security. These principles are then illustrated through the use of a small, but real, UNIX-like operating system called MINIX that allows students to test their knowledge in hands-on system design projects. Each book includes a CD-ROM that contains the full MINIX source code and two simulators for running MINIX on various computers.

An updated, concise reference for the Java programming language, version 8.0, and essential parts of its class languages, offering more detail than a standard textbook. The third edition of Java Precisely provides a concise description of the Java programming language, version 8.0. It offers a quick reference for the reader who has already learned (or is learning) Java from a standard textbook and who wants to know the language in more detail. The book presents the entire Java programming language and essential parts of the class libraries: the collection classes, the input-output classes, the stream libraries and Java 8's facilities for parallel programming, and the functional interfaces used for that. Though written informally, the book describes the language in detail and offers many examples. For clarity, most of the general rules appear on left-hand pages with the relevant examples directly opposite on the right-hand pages. All examples are fragments of legal Java programs. The complete ready-to-run example programs are available on the book's website. This third edition adds material about functional parallel processing of arrays; default and static methods on interfaces; a brief description of the memory model and visibility across concurrent threads; lambda expressions, method reference expressions, and the related functional interfaces; and stream processing, including parallel programming and collectors.

In Part I, Prof. Targowski takes us through the evolution of modern computing and information systems. While much of this material is familiar to those of us who have lived through these developments, it would definitely not be familiar to our children or our students. He also introduces a perspective that I found both refreshing and useful: looking at the evolution on a country by country basis. For those of us who live in the U.S., it is all too easy to imagine that evolution to be a purely local phenomenon. I found my appreciation of the truly global nature of computing expanding as he walked me through each country’s contributions. In Parts II and III, constituting nearly half of the book, Targowski provides what I would describe as an in-depth case study of the challenges and successes of informatics in Poland. As he tells each story—many of which involved him personally—the reader cannot help but better understand the close relationship between the freedoms that we in the west take for granted and the ability to produce innovations in IT. Even after Poland left the orbit of the former Soviet Union, the remaining vestiges of the old way of thinking remained a major impediment to progress. Being right and being rigorous were far less important than being in tune with the “approved” ways of thinking. There are important lessons to be learned here, particularly as we try to project how IT will evolve in rapidly developing economies such as China. But, from my experience, they apply equally well to western academia, where moving outside of preferred values and patterns of research can lead a scholar to be ignored or even disparaged. In Part IV, Targowski presents a bold, forward-looking synthesis of informatics and informing science in the future. Building upon articles recently published in Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, he presents a conceptual scheme of historical informing waves that builds upon historians such as Toynbee. He then considers how these trends will necessarily force us to rethink how we develop and apply IT. He does not steer away from the controversial. But he also provides cogent arguments for all his predictions and recommendations.