Harry R. Lewis, Harvard Magazine, May/June 1999
"The biography, and its companion, Makin' Numbers, a collection of essays and retrospectives by Aiken's contemporaries, guarantee that the Aiken lore will not be lost. But they provide much more. These books are based on interviews with Aiken and his contemporaries, on many early reports and other documents, and to some degree on Cohen's personal knowledge of Aiken from the time when Cohen, now Thomas professor for the history of science emeritus, started to teach at Harvard... These books document the explosion of novelties in the Comp Lab at a time when almost nothing was known about computing, and have done us a great service by preserving, fondly but dispassionately and exhaustively, the memory of Aiken and those who worked with him."

Harry R. Lewis, Harvard Magazine, May/June 1999
"The biography, and its companion, Makin' Numbers, a collection of essays and retrospectives by Aiken's contemporaries, guarantee that the Aiken lore will not be lost. But they provide much more. These books are based on interviews with Aiken and his contemporaries, on many early reports and other documents, and to some degree on Cohen's personal knowledge of Aiken from the time when Cohen, now Thomas professor for the history of science emeritus, started to teach at Harvard... These books document the explosion of novelties in the Comp Lab at a time when almost nothing was known about computing, and have done us a great service by preserving, fondly but dispassionately and exhaustively, the memory of Aiken and those who worked with him."

Book Description
with the cooperation of Robert V. D. Campbell This collection of technical essays and reminiscences is a companion volume to I. Bernard Cohen's biography, Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. After an overview by Cohen, Part I presents the first complete publication of Aiken's 1937 proposal for an automatic calculating machine, which was later realized as the Mark I, as well as recollections of Aiken's first two machines by the chief engineer in charge of construction of Mark II, Robert Campbell, and the principal programmer of Mark I, Richard Bloch. Henry Tropp describes Aiken's hostility to the exclusive use of binary numbers in computational systems and his alternative approach. Part II contains essays on Aiken's administrative and teaching styles by former students Frederick Brooks and Peter Calingaert and an essay by Gregory Welch on the difficulties Aiken faced in establishing a computer science program at Harvard. Part III contains recollections by people who worked or studied with Aiken, including Richard Bloch, Grace Hopper, Anthony Oettinger, and Maurice Wilkes. Henry Tropp provides excerpts from an interview conducted just before Aiken's death. Part IV gathers the most significant of Aiken's own writings. The appendixes give the specs of Aiken's machines and list his doctoral students and the topics of their dissertations.

Book Info
Presents a biography of Howard Hathaway Aiken (1900-1973) who was a major figure in the early years of the digital era. Offers a clear and often entertaining introduction to Aiken and his times. DLC: Aiken, Howard H.

About the Author
I. Bernard Cohen is the Victor S. Thomas Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Harvard University. Gregory W. Welch, the former Director of Exhibits at the Computer Museum in Boston, works in marketing at the Intel Corporation.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

with the cooperation of Robert V. D. Campbell

This collection of technical essays and reminiscences is a companion volume to I. Bernard Cohen's biography, Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. After an overview by Cohen, Part I presents the first complete publication of Aiken's 1937 proposal for an automatic calculating machine, which was later realized as the Mark I, as well as recollections of Aiken's first two machines by the chief engineer in charge of construction of Mark II, Robert Campbell, and the principal programmer of Mark I, Richard Bloch. Henry Tropp describes Aiken's hostility to the exclusive use of binary numbers in computational systems and his alternative approach.