Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books

The 1948 Bell Telephone Lab Computer

JF Ptak Science Books

Alt,  Franz.  A Bell Telephone Laboratories Computing Machine--I+II.  Washington DC:  National Research Council,  1948.  1st edition.  Mathematical Tables and other Aids to Computation, III/21  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  $750.00

We offer the two issues of MTAC, with the complete article by Dr. Alt occupying pp 1-13 and 69-84. SCARCE.

"Between 1937 and 1946 engineers and scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories built a number of digital relay computers, among the first working programmable machines anywhere. Their experience with the technology of switching-that second aspect of telephony-was the basis for Bell's entry into digital computing. But the first aspect-the transmission of analog voice signals-played a role too, as we shall see. The invention of the computer at Bell Laboratories, like its invention elsewhere, resulted from a convergence of technical skill, social need, and talent. Those preconditions were there by the mid-1930's. It remained for one of Bell's employees, Dr. George Stibitz, to serve as the catalyst to bring them together." Reckoners, Bell Labs, page 0074

On Franz Alt:

Dr. Franz L. Alt (born 1910 in Vienna, Austria and who lived to be 101 years old)  was an Austrian born American mathematician who made major contributions to computer science in its early days. Franz Alt grew up in Austria and received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Vienna in 1932, researching set-theoretic topology and logical foundations of geometry. He left Austria for the United States after the 1938 Anschluss. An avid skier, he served in the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division during World War II reaching the rank of Second Lieutenant. After the war, he worked on the ENIAC and other Army computing projects; later he worked in the Computing Laboratory of the National Bureau of Standards, and eventually at the American Institute of Physics. He is best known as one of the founders of the Association for Computing Machinery, having served as its president from 1950 to 1952; he also wrote one of the first books on digital computers, Electronic Digital Computers (Academic Press, 1958).  

Looking Backwards: How Far Back in Time is 1948 (in Computer Years)?

JF Ptak Science Books  (ref post 1596)

C\omputer History Ephemera:  12x9'', 4 pp, 1 sheet folded, with envelope.  Printed ca. September, 1949.  Rare.  $350

 

The history of computing, in its inception, could be measured in decades, beginning, say with Babbage; by the time of the earliest large machines (1945-1950), computer time could be measured in a decade.  Come the deacade of 1960, the computer year could be measured finally in years.  After that, after microminiaturization, and the personal computer, the year started to be measured in months.  And then, of course, the year really sped up--I'm not sure if there is only a week or two in the year, now; maybe its measured in days.

[Click to expand]

Looking at this document from the beginning of the first tweeks of mass professionalism in the development of the computer emphasizes this business of time.  This draft of the constitution and bylaws of the Association for Computing Machinery (the ACM) was complete in four pages, including the establishment of its members, officers, executive committee, meetings, bylaws, meetings--the whole deal, in four pages. 

The document is undated, but as far as I can determine, I believe that this document was printed in late 1949, soon after the ACM dropped the "Eastern" that used to appear as the first word in the title of the organization.   

Its quite a spectacular thing, seeing what would become a vast organization be summed up in its infancy on one sheet of folded paper.   

The rest of the document follows:

The First German Appearance of the Landmark Brownian Motion Paper, 1828

JF Ptak Science Books

"Mikroskopische Beobachtungen über die im Pollen der Pflanzen enthaltenen Partikeln, und über das allgemeine Vorkommen activer Molecüle in organischen und unorganischen Körpern.

(Unterdem Titel: "A brief Account of Microscopical Observations made in the Months of June, July, and August 1827, on the Particles contained in the Pollen of the Plants; and on the general Existence of active Molecules in Organic and Inorganic Bodies" als besondere Abhandlung von den berühmten Verfasse bekannt)."

Leipzig, Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1828. Publihsed in Annalen der Physik und Chemie. Hrsg.von Poggendorff, in Band. 14, Zweites Stück. (Jahrgang 1828, zehntes Stück) appearing on pp 294-324.  We offer the entire volume, pp viii, 628pp, six flding plates.  The volume is bound in half-cloth and marbled boards.  This copy is in VERY GOOD condition, and is from the library of Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton Ohio, and ealier from the library of the Deutsche Akademie der Luftfahrtforschung (Berlin, founded 1938/9 and active until 1944). There is another, older, contemporary library stamp on the title page, small (about 1 inch) oval, mostly faded away, though I can identify that the library was in Aachen. 

Condition notes:  this is a nice copy, with "Wright Field Library/Dayton, Ohio" rubber stamped on the page edges at top and bottom of textblock. 

This is the first physical demonstration of atomism. $1350 

"Brownian motion (named after the botanist Robert Brown) or pedesis (from Greek: πήδησις "leaping") is the presumably random drifting of particles suspended in a fluid (a liquid or a gas) or the mathematical model used to describe such random movements, which is often called a particle theory.

The mathematical model of Brownian motion has several real-world applications. An often quoted example is stock market fluctuations, however, movements in share prices may arise due to unforeseen events which do not repeat themselves.

Brownian motion is among the simplest of the continuous-time stochastic (or probabilistic) processes, and it is a limit of both simpler and more complicated stochastic processes (see random walk and Donsker's theorem). This universality is closely related to the universality of the normal distribution. In both cases, it is often mathematical convenience rather than the accuracy of the models that motivates their use. This is because Brownian motion, whose time derivative is everywhere infinite, is an idealised approximation to actual random physical processes, which always have a finite time scale."--wiki

Magie A Source Book in Physics p. 251-255; Printing and the Mind of Man, # 290 (being the English paper from 1828); Sparrow, Milestones of Science # 31; 

S.C. Kleene Offprints

We're offering a tidy collection of ten offprints by the logician S.C. Kleene, dated 1959-1964.  Sold.