Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer / Makin' Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer

Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. By I. Bernard Cohen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. x + 329 pp. Cloth, $34.95. ISBN 0262032627.

Makin' Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer. By I. Bernard Cohen, Gregory W Welch, and Robert V.D. Campbell, eds. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. xvii + 279 pp. Appendices, figures, index, and tables. Cloth, $40.00. ISBN 0262032635.

Reviewed by Nathan L. Ensmenger

In the fall of 1937, a young instructor at Harvard University presented the senior engineer of the International Business Machines Corporation with an extraordinary request: he wanted IBM to assist him in (and pay for) the construction of an automatic …