Calculi: Images Of Computing In Olden And Modern Times [Reviews]

The Reviews Department includes reviews of publications, films, audio and video tapes, and exhibits relating to the history of computing. Full-length studies of technical, economic, business, and institutional aspects or other works of interest to Annals readers are briefly noted, with appropriate biblio-graphic information. Colleagues are encouraged to recommend works they wish to review and to suggest titles to the Reviews Editor. This beautifully illustrated book is, in effect, a catalogue of an exhibition of a small part of the collections of the Forschungsin-stitut fiir Diskrete Mathematik at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat in Bonn, Germany. This organization started to collect mechanical calculators and related devices some 25 years ago and now has over 700 in its collection-including some very rare examples of early machines. The collection will be put on public exhibit in the near future in a museum to be called Arithmeum. The book, which has text in both German and English, is divided into two parts: The first describes some work done on the development of microprocessors, and the second and much more interesting part (to me) is a description of mechanical calculating from the earliest times. The back of the book contains 43 of the finest color photographs of calculating equipment that I have ever seen. Subjects range from machines created by Grillet, Morland, and Hahn (the photos of the Hahn machine and similar machines made during that era are particularly spectacular) to the much more modern versions such as the Curta. The photographer-Michael Lohaus, the man in charge of the photographic documentation of the historical collection-is obviously very talented. This book will be one of the treasures on my bookshelf and will be brought out and shown to anyone who dares to refer to these older machines as " bits of junk. " more are listed as being in preparation. The author of this volume is a professor of the history of mathematics and logic at Mid-dlesex University. He may be known to the readers of the Annals for the papers " Work for the Hairdressers: The Production of de Prony's Logarithmic and Trigonometric Tables " His many contributions to the history of mathematics include the editorship of the two-volume Companion Encyclopedia of the Histo y and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, which was used extensively in the preparation of the present volume. The Fontana History of the Mathematical Sciences surveys the growth of mathematical knowledge from …