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For the tinkerer: machines that compute, dams and farm machinery

Engineering in its own words: the theory of automata, the history of programming languages, the large dam and the mechanised farm.

Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, Jean E. Sammet

In April 1962 a New York symposium gathered early computer-science research on mathematical automata, formal languages and the limits of computation; Polytechnic Press published the proceedings the next year. In 1969 Jean E. Sammet compared the early high-level languages, COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL and LISP, in a book whose jacket draws them as a Tower of Babel. Away from the computer, Claudio Marcello’s papers on major dams were gathered in a large commemorative volume in 1969, and in 1935 the Second International Congress of Rural Engineering met in Madrid to report on agriculture, mechanization and infrastructure.

Proceedings of the Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Automata, Jerome Fox (editor)
No. 0164 · 1963
What machines can compute, before computer science had departments

The proceedings of a New York symposium on automata, published in 1963.

Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, Jean E. Sammet
No. 0147 · 1969
Programming languages, when they had become a Tower of Babel

Jean E. Sammet’s 1969 history of COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL, LISP and the rest.

Scritti di Claudio Marcello, Claudio Marcello
No. 0165 · 1969
A lifetime of large dams

Claudio Marcello’s papers, plans and photographs, collected in 1969.

Organisation et rapports du II Congrès International de Génie Rural
No. 0153 · 1935
Mechanizing the farm, in Madrid

The reports of the 1935 international congress of rural engineering.

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Odd Index · written from the catalogue records
  • Every statement about a copy (stamps, inscriptions, condition, edition) comes from that copy’s own catalogue record and photographs; nothing is carried over from another copy.
  • Interpretations are labelled as interpretations. Background that the records do not contain has not been added.
  • Several readings here are tentative or carried over from earlier records (Carmichael, Howland, Havens, the Stately Game’s addressee); each is hedged in the text and flagged on the object page.

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