Home computers : 100 icons that defined a digital generation / text by Alex Wiltshire ; photography by John Short.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wiltshire, Alex, author.

Contributor:

Short, John (Photographer), photographer.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Microcomputers--History.

Microcomputers.

Microcomputers--History--Pictorial works.

History.

Genre:

History.

Pictorial works.

Illustrated works.

Physical Description:

255 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge Massachusetts : MIT Press, [2020]

Summary:

Home Computers showcases the quirky and characterful beginnings of a commercial product that would come to unite the globe: the personal computer. As so much technology is forgotten once it is superseded, this is a celebration of machines, industrial design and techno-utopianism of an era in the not-so-distant past. Conceived as a visual sourcebook of the most popular, most powerful and most idiosyncratic computers to grace our workspaces, this timely publication offers a reflection on how far we've come and a nostalgic look at a time when digital worlds could be contained in a box and turned off, rather than ever-present in our lives. Home Computers opens with a scene-setting retrospective by computer and gaming writer Alex Wiltshire. The book's heart is a series of specially commissioned photographs that capture details of switches and early user-interface design, letterforms and logos, and the quirks that set one computer off from another. Images are complemented by a potted history of each device, the inventors or personalities behind it, and its innovations and influences.

Notes:

"Produced in collaboration with The Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK".

Published by arrangement with Thames & Hudson, Ltd., London.

ISBN:

9780262044011

0262044013

OCLC:

1119610186

Publisher Number:

99984754267