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Review
FROM WIREDÂ Â July 2007Photographer Mark Richards elevates dusty computer artifacts to stunning objets d'art in his detailed new book, Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers.Don't let the academic title fool you -- this five-decade romp reads less like a history lesson and more like an ode to an old friend.Writer John Alderman captures the excitement of the book's 35 computers -- from the room-filling ENIAC to the Commodore 64 -- and reveals some of their quirks (the SAGE came with a built-in cigarette lighter and ashtray; the retired WISC was inadvertently hit by bullets). Alderman also revisits the early careers of several industry pioneers, including Bill Gates, who in 1975 wrote the programming language Altair BASIC with Paul Allen, and Steve Wozniak, who a year later failed to convince Hewlett-Packard to build a personal computer. In the end, the book -- with its crude yet beautiful images -- is a pleasing reminder of how far we've come and how far we have to go.NEW YORK TIMESÂ July 2007Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The best coffee table book I've seen this year may well be "Core Memory: AVisual Survey of Vintage Computers," with text by John Alderman and photos fromMark Richards.The images are, by and large, mind-blowing.Take the one above, of the guts of a UNIVAC I computer, put on the market byRemington-Rand in 1951. It may look like a "Monty Python"-esque torture device.But this thing was, Alderman points out, the first commercial computer sold in theUnited States.I'll let Alderman explain what we're looking at, though - warning - the geekfactor is moderately high:For memory the UNIVAC used a huge mercury delay line - picturedhere - and tape drives were used to store programs and data. To processinformation, the mercury delay line used sound waves to send pulsesthrough a tube of mercury, then detect and return them. This memory tankwould hold 18 such tubes. The use of tape, rather than punch cards, to storeinformation was a significant innovation and one that was met withsignificant resistance from customers who would no longer see and holddata in hand, as they had with punch cards. Adding to the anxiety, salesmenfrom competitor IBM were said to have suggested that the spinning metaltape posed a safety hazard.The UNIVAC muscled its way into United States political history; it liked Ike.The UNIVAC garnered a lot of publicity when it was used to predictelection results in 1952 from a small sample of voters in key states. Itaccurately predicted Eisenhower's landslide victory over Adlai Stevensonand helped further solidify the hopes and fears that the general public hadabout these wondrous but scary machines.SMITHSONIAN July 2007Not long after photographer Mark Richards walked into the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California, he was smitten with the vintage adding machines, supercomputers and PCs. In this high-technology museum--home to Google's first production server and a 1951 Univac 1, America's first commercial computer--Richards saw more than engineering brilliance. He saw beauty.Richards' resulting still lifes have just been published in Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers, 150 strikingly warm pictures of machines, parts and paraphernalia. Richards, a 51-year-old photojournalist who has worked for Time, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, spent three months shooting at the Silicon Valley museum. "I've lived with these machines for so long," he says, "they're like relatives that you love-hate."Such familiarity has not traditionally characterized art photographs of machines and industry. In the 1920s and '30s, Margaret Bourke-White's stark photographs of a looming dam and towering smokestacks, or Charles Sheeler's clinical photographs of a vast Ford Motor plant, established a certain distance between viewers and technology. But in Richards' images we are at times almost inside the machinery, and instead of being alienated we are drawn to the shapes and textures. The yellow wires of the IBM 7030 (below) look like a plant's hanging roots. Richards says a 1975 ILLIAC (Illinois Automatic Computer) IV has wiring--bundles of red and blue veins--that looks like anatomical illustrations from Leonardo's time. He was impressed by such "organic" forms, he says, but also by creature-like machines that seem straight out of science fiction.Richards' photographs demystify technology to a certain extent--we see the hard drives, tape reels, memory boards, bulbs and vacuum tubes--but they also rely on an element of mystery, exalting form over utility. The spiky screw-studded mercury delay line of the Univac 1 could just as easily be a helmet for a cyber charioteer as a memory tank for a computer used to process census data. Richards zooms in on the circa 1965 magnetic core plane: a gold frame woven with a bright fabric of red wires, strung from rows of metallic pins. That the core "is a magnetic force that drives the ability of rings and wires to store information," as the accompanying text by John Alderman labors to explain, hardly adds to the photograph's power.Richards, a self-proclaimed geek, admits that there are computer parts and hard drives lying around his house, in Marin County, California, where he sometimes actually builds computers. Indeed, he seems to revel in the technology of his photography project, particularly the fact that he used a computer to process his digital photographs of computers. Even so, his intimate portraits reveal the unmistakable mark of a human hand.
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Product details
Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: Silicon Valley Historical Association; 3rd edition (2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0692092633
ISBN-13: 978-0692092637
Package Dimensions:
10.9 x 9.6 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.2 out of 5 stars
42 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#104,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The only thing "bad" about this book is that there isn't more of it.The photos are BEAUTIFUL. (get it for that reason alone)Perhaps if you are a CRAV Computing person (Classic, Retro, Antique, Vintage), and/or lived back in the Good Ol' Days and worked with equipment like is portrayed, you might enjoy it more than others. Although any person truly interested in computers should really enjoy it. (so it would make a nice gift for the discriminating computer enthusiast -- or the gift for the computer person who has everything (which is impossible -- too much is never enough))I bet the author was planning on doing a series. But these things tend to be somewhat vertical market, so that probably isn't going to happen. More's the pity and it's our loss. (the Royal Our)
The book is very pretty, and has some *outstanding* photographs of classic machines. If only the selection of machines and printing (at least on my copy) matched the quality of the photos, this would be on my "must by" list.Newer photo-books like this rely on some special printing techniques to make their images stand out, such as printing a glossy image, with the non-printed portion paper treated to make it flat and bright white. It makes for a stunning presentation when it is done properly.My book has several pages where the glossy images are scratched, and others where the pages are covered with scratches and dirt. I don't know if my pages sat on the top of a pallet or the presses were just dirty, but it clearly happened before binding, as in some cases, page 64 on the left hand side is very dirty, page 65 on the right is totally clean. The beautiful dust jacket is also badly scuffed up--a book like this should have been shrink wrapped--and the cover dinged. This Chinese-printed book would have been considered a "hurt" at my local press.On this sort of book, that totally shatters the beauty of it all, and I think I will end up returning it. I considered asking for a replacement, but I am further disappointed by the selection of machines.There are major companies of the era not even represented here. Not a single Data General machine...I would have expected the "70's photogenic" Nova, or a later machine like a S/150. No Burroughs, no DEC-20...the entire history of DEC reduced to two photos and one closeup of a pdp8 and a glimpse of the boot console panel from a DEC-10.VAX? What's a VAX? No mention of a VAX here, but the TRS-80 I and 100 get four pages. I *loved* my Model 100, but this is not the place for it.With a title like "core memory" and a pdp8 on the cover, I expected more early machines, yet the book dedicates six pages to the Apple I/II and four to the Commodore 64.There is more coverage of the Commodore 64 PC than the entire history of Digital Equipment Corporation. Control Data is limited to a photo of the CDC6600 console, a photo of backplane wiring and two images of a boot switch panel.Home PC's should really be their own book. But if they wanted to cover home PCs up to 1983, they should have hit "visually iconic" machines like the IMSAI or the Ohio Scientific PCs. How about some classic rare peripherals; the Atari 815 dual disk drive is a 9x9x12" box with nine LEDs in three colors, surely some unique peripherals like this deserve inclusion more than a two-page closeup of the Commodore 64's keyboard.Now, I would like to mention the wonderful photos of SAGE and Johnniac. Had it not been that the photo of the SAGE light gun was covered with scratches, I would have kept it for SAGE alone. But as I said, in a photo book, damaged photos ruin the whole point.I spotted a few factual errors and typos in my quick scan of the book, but the major errors are really errors of omission.Conclusion: If yours is printed correctly and clean, it is a beautiful book and a bargain at the Amazon sale price. But if you are expecting a book primarily about machines running core memory, or minicomputers/mainframes from the 1970s as would be inferred from the cover and the name, you will be disappointed. I am.
This book is a stunningly beautiful work of art. With well-composed shots of decades' worth of computers, it's a joy to look at.However, the book is not anything like a comprehensive computer history. Each computer covered has just a short description, enough to give it some context. Nor are the pictures of each computer comprehensive; clearly, they've been chosen for their artistic value, not to give an overall view of the machine.I will admit that the pictures were still enough to take me down memory lane, even if for me that starts with the Apple ][ and TRS-80. But, I didn't learn anything about those computers that I didn't already know.So, as long as you're willing to approach this as an art photography book, I highly recommend it. If you're looking for a history of computing, this isn't it.
The book is a great overview of the history of commerical/military computer development in the last 60+ years. Hits most of the major models, and mentions why they're in the book. Each one was a special devleopment in it's time for one reason or another.But after reading it, I wish it was about 2x the size, physically. It's a large book alredy, but it should be art-sized. And it could EASILY be several hundreds of pages. I know it's more of an overview book, but it would be great if each model had it's own chapter, including design diagrams, pictures of the installations, programmers, builders, etc.On it's own it's a great book, and well worth the money. But the computer-nerd in me sees the potential of this content...
Great pictures !... if you are a lover of vintage computers you will definitely find a lot of pleasure as you browse over the pages of this book. Not too much detail in terms of the history or architecture of the computers that were included, but you will find a lot of joy exploring the details in the images. I'm sure not even those working with these machines had a chance to contemplate the fine touches, but here you can.
The stats for the Kenbak-1 are missing. Other than that, this is a great "art" book with old computers.
It's a table top picture book that my friends have flipped though when they've had a few drinks... or I occasionally pull out to explain older series machines and infrastructure to people. Bottom line is that it is not anything more than that. Lacks a lot of information - especially on any technical level - and the pictures are of an artistic value (which is fine) but without any additional back up stories or explanation of I/O or capability. It also crosses into newer machines from the 80's which are not mainframe, core-memory, 70's based or "super-computer" based -- and there are ample books on these already published. And we won't mention the vast amount of vital computers that were not even mentioned (... VAX anyone?!)As I opened with - TABLE TOP PICTURE BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY. And for the price, it's totally worth it.
Fantastic book. Incredible quality. I've had it for years and never regretted buying it.
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