Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books LLC

A Very Early, In-Depth Description of the UNIVAC (1950)

Preliminary Description of the UNIVAC

 

Preliminary Description of the UNIVAC for EMCC Personel Only.

11x8 inches. 54 leaves (printed on one side only). Offset printed (?).  Intended as an internal document, only.  Copyright and printed 1950 (Revised.  7/19/50) by the Ekert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, a Subsidiary of Remington Rand Inc. Marked: “U-300” and "#192".  RARE. $2250

A note on the author: who is identified on as  “HFMjf:mb” (as the last line of the document). This is almost certainly Herbert F. Mitchell, Jr., who we find identified in the Grace Hopper papers at the Smithsonian Institution (and who was author of  “Outline for First Lecture: Programming Course for EMCC's Engineers”, 4/4/50; A-TC-7 by HFM jr (Herbert F. Mitchell, Jr.), 4 pages and “Outline for Second Lecture: Programming Course for EMCC's Engineers”, 11 April 1950; A-TC-7, no author but probably by H.F. Mitchell (see First Lecture), 2 pages. AND  with J. Presper Eckert, Jr., James R. Weiner, H. Frazer Welsh “The UNIVAC System”, American Institute of Electrical Engineers Institute of Radio Engineers Conference, pp. 6-16, December, 1951.  Dr. Herbert F. Mitchell was the Director of the Computational Lab at Ekert-Mauchly: . “Dr. Grace Hopper was among the staff as well as Betty Holberton, Al Tonik, Art Katz, Hildegard Nidecker, and Dick Woltman. Paul Chinitz, Steve Wright, Harvey Rubinstein, Lloyd Stowe…”    ALSO:  Mitchell:  Ph.D. Applied Mathematics, Harvard, 1948 (helped Howard Aiken build the Mark II); joined Ekert-Mauchly in November, 1949 and continued with Univac and Sperry Rand until 1959 (and was chief programmer on the UNIVAC I, and later, sales manager).

This work is composed of 26 sections, as follows, and seems to be a rather complete description of the running of the UNIVAC as could be in 54 pages:

1. Introduction
2. Initial read Operation
3. Four-stage Cycle of Operation
4. Data Transfers 
5. Arithmetic Operations
6. Overflow
7. Addition
8. Overflow Routine
9. Subtraction
10. Shifts
11. Multiplication
12. Division
13. Extraction
14. Control Transfers
15.  Tape Instructions
16.  Read Instructions
17. The Write Instructions
18. Read Tape Instructions
19. Supervisory Control Operations
20. Recorder Transfer of Control
21. The Writer Operations
22. The rewind Instruction
23. The Breakpoint Instruction
24. Supervisory Control Input
25. Tape Reversal
26. Checks

 

There are also two full page sheets of block diagrams:

--Simplified Block Diagram Central Input-output and Interlock Circuits

--Simplified Input circuits // Simplified Output circuits

 

Binding:  punch-bound in a period manila binding with metal compressors. Cloth tape spine.  Typed, home-made (contemporary) title on front of binding. 

 

Everything in VERY GOOD condition. Rare.   Only three copies found in OCLC/WorldCat. 

 

From Book Rags:

"UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was the first mass-produced commercial computer. UNIVAC was the result of a collaborative effort between computer pioneers John Mauchly (1907-1980) and J. Presper Eckert (1919-1995). Their partnership in building advanced computers began in the early 1940s at the Universityof Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering. At the Moore School , Mauchly and Eckert took lead roles in building ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), the world's first general-purpose electronic computer, and its successor EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), one of the first computers to implement the stored-program principle. The two men drew heavily on their experiences with ENIAC and EDVAC in the creation of UNIVAC."

 

The First Differential Analyzer in Great Britain, 1935

Two Early Papers on the Differential Analyzer   //   The First Differential Analyzer Built in Great Britain  1935

D.R. Hartree.  "The Differential Analyzer".  In:  Nature, 8 June 1935, col 135, #3423, pp940-943.  We offer the entire weekly issue in the original wrappers (the issue containing pp 933-972, plus 8pp illustrated ads.  This issue was removed from a larger, bound volume and shows evidence of such at the spine.  Two ex-library stamps on the front cover from the Smithsonian Institution,  Nice copy.  Scarce. 

(____.)  “The Differential Analyzer for the University of Manchester”.  News item covered in the “News and Views” section of the 6 April 1935 issue of Nature magazine, amounting to about one full column (of a double column pages).  Announcing the arrival of Dr. Hartree’s machine at Manchester. We offer the entire weekly issue in the original wrappers (the issue containing pp 933-972, plus 8pp illustrated ads.  This issue was removed from a larger, bound volume and shows evidence of such at the spine.  Two ex-library stamps on the front cover from the Smithsonian Institution,  Nice copy.  Scarce.  Pp 521-560, plus several pages of ads. 

Also of advanced interest:  N(icholas) Rashevsky’s article on "Mathematical Biophysics". (Pp 528-530). The pair:  $450

 

The Perceptron: Birth of Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence

Exceptional and Rare Offprints on the Beginning of Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence:  the Perceptron

All in OFFPRINT format

The three offprints by Rosenblatt, as follows:

1) Rosenblatt, Frank.  "The Perceptron: A Probabilistic Model for Information Storage and Organization in the Brain", Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.  Offprint: Psychological Review, v65, No. 6, pp. 386-408.
(Signed “Harry Blum Nov 59 the Hague” on the front cover.)

With:

2)______. "The Design of an Intelligent Automaton."  Offprint from Research Reviews, October 1958, Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy.  Pp 5-13.  
(Signed “H(arry) Blum, Nov 59, The Hague” on front cover.)

                                              

With:

3) ______. "Two Theorems of Statistical Separability on the Perceptron."  Offprint: published Proceedings of the Symposium on the Mechanization of Thought Processes.  November, 1958. 
(Signed “Harry Blum Nov 59 the Hague” on the front cover.)

   

All three are original offprints.

All in original paper wrappers and in FINE condition.

I should say that I never see these items in this format.  There is a copy of paper #1 being offered online right now.  It is a very nice copy of the single issue of the Psych Review, which is rare in itself, and is being offered at 2200, which is fair.  Again, my copy of this paper is an offprint, and considerably more rare.   Plus I’m offering the two other supporting papers in offprint form as well.

The three papers: 6500.00

NOTES:

Frank Rosenblatt (deeply observant iconoclast and computer pioneer, dead way too early at 43 in 1971) hoped that "the fundamental laws of organization which are common to all information handling systems, machines and men included, may eventually be understood", part of that process being a perception and thinking problem that he believed would be solved by his neural network known as the perceptron.  Rosenblatt’s contributions to the field could have been substantial—if he hadn’t been killed in ’71, he’d still be only 81 in 2009, with 38 more years of work under his belt.)

The perceptron was about the earliest of all neural networks, a stab at understanding the basic elements of information processing in the human brain, from memory to the cognitive processes, demonstrating his earliest achievement—the Mark I perceptron—in early 1960.  “The Mark I was the first machine that could “learn” to identify optical patterns.”—Jeff Heaton, Heaton research, History o fNeural Networks.

Encyclopedia Britannica describes the work briefly and accurately, so I’ll use their words:

“In 1957 Frank Rosenblatt of the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, began investigating artificial neural networks that he called perceptrons 1957  [working them on an IBM 704—JP]. He made major contributions to the field of AI, both through experimental investigations of the properties of neural networks (using computer simulations) and through detailed mathematical analysis. Rosenblatt was a charismatic communicator, and there were soon many research groups in the United States studying perceptrons. Rosenblatt and his followers called their approach connectionist to emphasize the importance in learning of the creation and modification of connections between neurons. Modern researchers have adopted this term”

In 2004 the IEEE (IEEE Computational Intelligence Society ) established the Frank Rosenblatt Award:

"The award is named in honor of Frank Rosenblatt, who is widely regarded as one of the founders of neural networks.  Basing his research on study of fly vision, he developed the single-layer input layer and an output layer of neural cells. Frequent presentation of a pattern or patterns resulted in changes in the input to output connections, facilitating future recognition of these patterns, or memory.  His work influenced and even anticipated many modern neural network approaches."

"This award will be presented for outstanding contributions to the advancement of the design, practice, techniques or theory in biologically and linguistically motivated computational paradigms including but not limited to neural networks, connectionist systems, evolutionary computation, fuzzy systems, and hybrid intelligent systems in which these paradigms are contained."

Computer History: Rare, Early Work on the Punched Card

JF Ptak Science Books LLC

 

Scratching the Zenith of the Computer Programming Genome:

The Best, Earliest Work on the Jacquard Loom and Jacquard Cards

Emanuel Anthony Posselt  The jacquard machine :  analyzed and explained : with an appendix on the preparation of jacquard cards, and practical hints to learners of jacquard designing. 1888, ©1887

127,  p., [2] folded leaves of plates : ill. ; 29 cm.  $3,000.  Rare first edition.

Philadelphia : Published under the auspices of the School [Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art].

“Extremely detaiuled description…of machines for preparing Jacquard cards, lavishly illustrated”—Randell, p. 501. (In:  Brian Randell, The Computer from Pascal to von Neuman, 2^nd edition, 1992). 

“Particularly useful for understanding how the cards were used, often considered as an early form of machine programming”. –Cortada, #330.  In:  James W. Cortada, Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1865-1956. 

Princeton University Press, 1999. Of partciular interest is the appendix, "Preparing Jacquard Cards", pp 85-102

 

Biographical Data for Posselt, published in 1900

     Author and textile expert. Born Reichenberg, Austria August 21, 1858. Son of

Emanuel Anthony and Elizabeth (Demuth) Posselt.  Graduated in 1876 from the Imperial Government Weaving Schoolof  Reichenberg. Next managed his father’s mills in Reichenberg, where he got his  first practical experience in textile manufacturing. Visited most important cities  in Europe carrying on the manufacture of textiles.  Came to the United States August 14, 1878. From that time until 1884 he was employed as a designer or supervisor in leading mills in the New England States and Pennsylvania.  In 1884 he became the first director of the first successful textile school in the  United States, started in Philadelphia in connection with the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art.  . In 1891, he resigned his position and accepted editorship of the Textile Record of North America, as of 1900 the foremost journal on textile manufacturing in the United States.

     At this time he established a private textile school as well as a book business

in textile literature. His first published work was The Jacquard Machine (4 editions as of 1900). His next and most important publication was The Technology of Textile Design (7 editions as of 1900), followed by The Structure of Fibres, Yarns and Fabrics. He also published Textile Calculations and Textile Machinery. He also published in the United States such valuable works as Wool Dyeing by Professor Gardner (written in England).  He was editor for the textile department in Funk & Wagnalls’ Standard Dictionary and numerous other works. His books are the standard authorities in this country on the subjects which they treat, and have equal status in England, where they have been republished.

 

See the full-text pdf version of the work at:

• The Jacquard Machine Analyzed and Explained (1888) by Emanuel Anthony Posselt   http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books/pea_jacq_1.pdf

From the library of Senator John Pastore (D-RI), (1904-1997), the first Italian-American elected to the US Senate (1950).   Bound in a workman’s blue buckram—not a pretty binding by any stretch—though internally in nice condition.  The binding is functional though this is a fine candidate for a nice rebinding. 

"This extensively illustrated work is the most detailed published account of the design and operation of the Jacquard loom, on which Jacquard himself appears to have never published any details. It includes an excellent description of the punched cards. The book includes a brief history of the Jacquard loom, a detailed description of its mechanism and an appendix on the preparation and stamping of Jacquard cards, illustrated with pictures of the stamping machines. The punched card method of storing and processing data evolved from methods developed by textile manufacturers in the 18th and 19th centuries for weaving complex patterns in cloth." Origins of Cyberspace 355. 

Oppression and Social Movements

I've just started List 10 (to the left), an ongoing effort to catalog some of the 1,000 or so pamphlet in the store having to do with oppressed and disadvantaged people, as well as the social movements that were started to address those tragedies.  Material covers the American Black experience (1850-1940), the Holocaust and other aspects of anti-Semitism, Japanese-American relocation, Labor Unions, anti-immigration policies, war propoaganda, and other related areas. 

Foundations for the First All-transistor Computer, 1950/1951

Among the Earliest Diagrams for a transistorized Computer  Ca. 1950/1

J.H. Felker.  Catalog of Digital Computer Designs.  [No place of publication and no date.]  I suspect that this is a Bell Laboratories (Whippany, New Jersey), publication which was printed in 1950/1951. [On dating this item:  I’m thinking that this paper was released before his other two papers in late 1951 as they are not referenced in the notes section.  Also there is no reference in the paper to an actual delivery date of the transistors, which Bell and Western Electric announced would be available “several months after” the first transistor conference in 1951.  Also the transistor pulse amplifier which Felker requires in his conclusions section seems to have been not available until 1953.]

11x8 ½ inches.  18 pages of text, 18 leaves of diagrams and schematics.  All text and drawings are printed on one side of the page, only.  This seems to be offset-printed.  It also seems to be made for restricted circulation.  Very Good condition.  $5000

This is Felker’s OUTSTANDING orientation on constructing a transistorized computer.* He states in the second paragraph “this computer design philosophy was followed in the design of the National Bureau of Standards Computer SEAC. It is believed that the approach that will result in a vacuum-tubeless computer at the earliest date is to follow the SEAC example in so far as the use of germanium diode logic circuits is concerned, but replacing the vacuum tube amplifiers with transistor amplifiers.”  He states further:  “Since the transistor itself has voltage and current relationships quite similar to a germanium diode it is expected that the diodes in a transistor computer will operate in a more natural environment…and will exhibit…longer life and more reliable operation.”

As a matter of fact all of the block diagrams in the illustration section are for “an all-semiconductor computer”.  Essentially these are among the earliest printed diagrams for a transistorized computer—and Felker would be the leader of the Bell team that constructed the world’s first all-transistor computer, the TRADIC, in 1955.

Felker was the leader of the Bell team that constructed the TRADIC, which was the world’s first fully transistorized computer.  It used 800 transistors and 10,000 germanium triodes and dispensed with vacuum tubes—it was much smaller (at three cubic feet) than any of its contemporaries, and was at least as fast as the fastest computer of the day.  It was also far more reliable, and far more dependable.

Felker concludes his paper thus:  “A fairly complete catalog of digital computer components has been given in block diagram form with estimates of the number of parts they require…  The principal conclusion to be drawn is that an all semiconductor computer can be built with diodes and transistors as soon as a transistor pulse amplifier with a high degree of reliability is available…”

The paper is structured in the following way, by sections:  (Synopsis and introduction); Basic Building Blocks; Switches; Handling of Negative Numbers; Adder; Accumulator; Multiplier; Divider; Translator; Binary Counter; Shift Registers; conclusions.

[The image to the right is folding, and thus partly obscured.]

The list of block diagrams, as follows:  Or-circuit; and-Circuit; Inhibitor Circuit; Amplifier with Pulse retiming; Storage Cell; a Simple Switch; an Eight Position Switch; Handling of Negative Numbers; Adder; Accumulator; Multiplier; Operation of Multiplier; Binary Division; Simplified Division Process; Divider; Translator; Binary counter; Shift register.

NOTES:

*For Felker's TRADIC Phase I computer project. See James R. Harris, "The Earliest Solid-State Digital Computers," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 49-54, Oct.-Dec. 1999, doi:10.1109/85.80153  AND  P.K. Giloth and R.C. Townley, TRADIC—Flyable Research Model Program, Summary Engineering Report, U.S. Air Force, Air Materiel Command, Dec.1 1958.

J.H. Felker, "Performance of the TRADIC Transistor Digital Computer," Proc. Eastern Joint Computer Conf., 1954, pp. 46-49. J.R. Harris, "TRADIC: The First Phase," Bell Laboratories Record, Vol. 36, Sept. 1958, pp. 330-334.

Felker.  Application of Transistors in a High-Speed Computer. Bell Labs Transistor Symposium, November 1951. (This is the event where MR. Felker was said to have amazed the other high-power attendees with his talk on transistor applications to the digital computer. 

Felker.  “The transistor as a digital computer component.”  AFIPS Joint Computer Conferences  Papers and discussions presented at the Dec. 10-12, 1951, joint AIEE-IRE computer conference: Review of electronic digital computers .

This is a picture of Mr. Felker, (kneeling), before the TRADIC. 

Creating the Idea of the Brain as a Computer--Walter Pitts, 1942

The Foundation for the Idea of the Neural Network

Pitts, W. (1942). Some observation on the simple neuron circuit.Bulletin for Mathematical Biophysics, 4, 121-129.

Pitts, W. (1942).  The linear theory of neuron networks: The static problem*.  Bulletin for Mathematical Biophysics, 4, 169-175.

Offered in two issues of The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, volume 4, Number 3, September 1942.  Original wrappers.  RARE.  $2,500.

 These two papers—but mostly the first paper—established the foundation for a later paper (“A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity,”  McCulloch, W. S. and Pitts, W. H..,1943 Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5:115-133) which would lead to thinking about the brain in terms of its being a computer, which was of enormous significance in computer design, artificial intelligence, cybernetics and theoretical neurophysiology.  As the much more widely-known co-author McCulloch has stated (below), it was the mathematics of the logician Pitts who drove the idea of the neural network through to completion and publication.  Pitts’ contributions were exceptional—as with these two foundation papers—though his extreme non-social behavior and attitude all but prevented him from  achieving any lasting acknowledgment save for the strict ueber-minority who were in the field.

*Abstract  The construction of a theory of activity in neuron networks of arbitrary topological structure is commenced under the linear excitation hypothesis: we consider conditions for possible steady-state equilibria, deferring a dynamical treatment to the sequel. [N.B. Both images are CLICKABLE for expanded view.]

Many years after the publication of “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity,”  (McCulloch, W. S. and Pitts, W. H. (1943). Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5:115-133)  Warren McCulloch gave Walter Pitts credit for contributing his knowledge of modular mathematics to their joint project:

“In 1941 I presented my notions on the flow of information through ranks of neurons to Rashevsky’s seminar in the Committee on Mathematical Biology of the University of Chicago and met Walter Pitts who then was about seventeen years old.  He was working on a mathematical theory of learning and I was much impressed.  He was interested in problems of circularity, how to handle regenerative nervous activity in closed loops. …   For two years Walter and I worked on these problems whose solution depended upon modular mathematics of which I knew nothing, but Walter did. “ (McCulloch, 1989, pp. 35-36, cf. McCulloch, 1965a, pp. 9-10). 

 Smalheiser, Neil R. Walter Pitts. In:  Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - Volume 43, Number 2, Winter 2000, pp. 217-226

(Introduction ) "The movie Forrest Gump made the point that the greatest, most heroic Americans are people of extraordinary character who flicker briefly into public consciousness and are quickly forgotten. Walter Pitts was pivotal in establishing the revolutionary notion of the brain as a computer, which was seminal in the development of computer design, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and theoretical neuroscience. He was also a participant in a large number of key advances in 20th-century science. Yet while his contemporaries Alan Turing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and John von Neumann entered the pantheon of fame, Pitts remains a shadowy folk hero. Stories about Pitts have circulated among the cognescenti for years, but almost nothing has been written about him. Here, I have collected reminiscences from his friends and associates to provide a unique insight into a remarkable life; if some exaggerations and embellishments have crept in, they only underscore the basic truth that Pitts was a man with Gumption ability..."

The Butterfly Effect, Chaos, and the Weather: Edward Lorenz, 1967

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  (Book store website)
History of Ideas Blog

Edward Lorenz.  The nature and theory of the general circulation of the atmosphere. 1967 [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]  World Meteorological Organization, No. 218, TP 115, 161 pp.   $500.00

This is Lorenz's (1917-2008) masterpiece on the dynamics of the atmosphere, which is perhaps the greatest work on the weather since it was first scientifically treated by George Hadley in the 1730's.  What Lorenz presents here is his theoretical treatment of the non-linear action of the circulation of the atmosphere, an accidental discovery he made* in 1963 ("Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences" see below)  which resulted in the establishment of the foundations of modern chaos theory.

This is a decent, working copy of his book, which seems to be quite scarce--it doesn't show up very often in collections in universities, and is basically absent from auction records and bookseller catalogs.  It is also only the second copy that I've had--both have been ex-library copies.  This copy is generally crisp and bright, and has only a few scant library marks.  This has an interesting library association, coming as it does from the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) library in Arlington.  Given the early work by Lorenz for the US Army Air Force and his subsequent work that was of high interest to the military, the association is appropriate. 

*From a wiki article, a nice description of the accidental nature of Lorenz's discovery:

"An early pioneer of the theory was Edward Lorenz whose interest in chaos came about accidentally through his work on weather prediction in 1961.[14] Lorenz was using a simple digital computer, a Royal McBee LGP-30, to run his weather simulation. He wanted to see a sequence of data again and to save time he started the simulation in the middle of its course. He was able to do this by entering a printout of the data corresponding to conditions in the middle of his simulation which he had calculated last time.

"To his surprise the weather that the machine began to predict was completely different from the weather calculated before. Lorenz tracked this down to the computer printout. The computer worked with 6-digit precision, but the printout rounded variables off to a 3-digit number, so a value like 0.506127 was printed as 0.506. This difference is tiny and the consensus at the time would have been that it should have had practically no effect. However Lorenz had discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome.[15] Lorenz's discovery, which gave its name to Lorenz attractors, proved that meteorology could not reasonably predict weather beyond a weekly period (at most)."

Significant Works by Lorenz  (a full listing from MIT is found here.) 

1955 Available potential energy and the maintenance of the general circulation. Tellus. Vol.7
1963 Deterministic nonperiodic flow. Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. Vol.20 : 130—141 link [10].
1967 The nature and theory of the general circulation of atmosphere. World Meteorological Organization. No.218
1969 Three approaches to atmospheric predictability. American Meteorological Society. Vol.50
1976 Nondeterministic theories of climate change. Quaternary Research. Vol.6
1990 Can chaos and intransitivity lead to interannual variability? Tellus. Vol.42A
2005 Designing Chaotic Models. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences: Vol. 62, No. 5, pp. 1574–1587.

Video of Lorenz Speaking

Predecessors to Lorenz in Chaos Theory and Dynamical Systems

Jules Henri Poincaré (1890) "Sur le problème des trois corps et les équations de la dynamique. Divergence des séries de M. Lindstedt," Acta Mathematica, vol. 13, pages 1–270.

Hadamard, Jacques (1898). "Les surfaces à courbures opposées et leurs lignes géodesiques". Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées 4: pp. 27–73.

George D. Birkhoff, Dynamical Systems, vol. 9 of the American Mathematical Society Colloquium Publications (Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society, 1927)

Kolmogorov, A. N. (1941a). “Local structure of turbulence in an incompressible fluid for very large Reynolds numbers,” Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR, vol. 30, no. 4, pages 301–305. Reprinted in: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Mathematical and Physical Sciences (Series A), vol. 434, pages 9–13 (1991).

Significant Papers by Loenrz in pdf

The nature and theory of the general circulation of the atmosphere. [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]  World Meteorological Organization, No. 218, TP 115, 161 pp.

and

Edward N. Lorenz (1963). "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow". Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 20: 130–141.http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0469/20/2/pdf/i1520-0469-20-2-130.pdf.
Edward N. Lorenz (1969). "Atmospheric predictability as revealed by naturally occurring analogues". Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 26: 636–646. doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1969)26<636:APARBN>2.0.CO;2. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0469/26/4/pdf/i1520-0469-26-4-636.pdf.
Edward N. Lorenz (1969). "Three approaches to atmospheric predictability". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 50: 345–349. http://eapsweb.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/Three_approaches_1969.pdf.

Notices on Lorenz

Tim Palmer (2008). "Edward Norton Lorenz". Physics Today 61 (9): 81–82. doi:10.1063/1.2982132.
"Lorenz Receives 1991 Kyoto Prize". MIT News Office. 1991. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1991/24996/24998.html.

Awards

1969 Carl Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, American Meteorological Society.
1973 Symons Memorial Gold Medal, Royal Meteorological Society.
1975 Fellow, National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.).
1981 Member, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
1983 Crafoord Prize, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
1984 Honorary Member, Royal Meteorological Society.
1991 Kyoto Prize for ‘… his boldest scientific achievement in discovering "deterministic chaos" .’.

Two Classic Works in Cybernetics--Wiener, 1948 and Ashby, 1956

I'm happy to offer a pair of significant books in cybernetics:

Wiener, Norbert.  Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 

Published by the Technology Press of MIT, 1948.  First edition.  This is a beautiful copy in a VERY GOOD (somewhat chipped) dustjacket.  Wiener of course was the sensationally gifted mathematician at MIT where, among other things, coined the word "cybernetics".  ("Wiener was a pioneer in the study of stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems. Wiener also founded cybernetics, a field that formalizes the notion of feedback and has implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, philosophy, and the organization of society.")

OFFERED WITH:

Ashby,  W. Ross:  An Introduction to Cybernetics;  London:  Chapman and Hall,  1956.  1st edition.   
295pp  8vo.  Cloth.  Very good condition.   

The pair:  $850.

W. Ross Ashby (London, 1903-1972)  was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics and the study of complex systems.

REVIEW COPY. Lovely copy in a near-fine, crisp, colorful  dustjacket. Previous owner's inscription. Review Copy slip repaired. Scarce--this is the only review copy of this book we have seen.

Ross Ashby was one of the original members of the Ratio Club, a small informal dining club of young psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics. The club was founded in 1949 by the neurologist John Bates and continued to meet until 1958.

Earlier, in 1946, Alan Turing wrote a letter to Ashby suggesting he use Turing's Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) for his experiments instead of building a special machine. In 1948 Ashby made the Homeostat.

The High-Popular Appraisal of Computers, 1949-1950

 I offer the four wonderful and somewhat significant appearances of Claude Shannon, Edmund Berkeley, Warren Weaver and Harry M. Davis as they write about cutting-edge technology in the computer world for 1949/1950.  It is very interesting to see them in situ, giving the coverage of the latest breaking news in the compsci world a real taste of local color.
The four, all in original (colorful!) wrappers, in Good condition: $1000

Berkeley,  Edmund C.:  "Simple Simon";  New York:  Scientific American,     Vol 183, No. 5, November 1950  Pp 40-44    Original printed wrappers.  Near fine condition.          This is the entire issue of SA for November 1950 and features Columbia University's "electrical brain" in great splendor (and in color) on the fron cover. Striking.   "Last spring the world's smallest true mechanical brain was unveiled at Columbia University.  Its function:  to explain in a rudimentary way the principles and the operation of its forbidding and inaccessible relatives."

Offered With:

Warren Weaver.  "The Mathematical Theory of Communication".  New York, published in Scientific American.  Vol 181, No. 1, July 1949.  Pp 11-15.  Good condition, nice and bright copy.  This is the entire issue for July 1949. 

Offered With:

Harry M. Davis. "Mathematical Machines"; New York, Scientific American, Vol 180 No. 4; April 1949.  Occupies pp 28-40.  We offer the entire issue for April 1949.  "The electrical and mechanical devices that have assumed certain functions of the human brain are rapidly becoming a big business.  A review of the present state of affairs, with emphasis on the digital computer."

And Offered With:

Claude E. Shannon.  "A Chess Playing Machine", New York, Scientific American, Vol 182, No. 2.  Occupies pp 48-51.  "The modern electronic computer can be set up in such a way as to play a fairly strong and apparently imaginative game of chess against a human opponent.  This raises the question of whether it can "think".