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Joel Shurkin’s Engines of the Mind (Norton, £9.95, ISBN 0 393 31471
5) is a congenial history of the development of computers. In that thorough
American way, it starts at the beginning and goes on to the end, leaving no area
unexplored. All the pioneers are there: the British, such as Charles Babbage and
Alan Turing, get their due. Revolutions brought about by the transistor and the
succession of mainframe machines by personal computers are well covered. There
are anecdotes galore, striking personalities, a glimpse into the future and
sparse, muddy illustrations.