Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Author: Charles Petzold
Paperback: 382 pages
ISBN: 0735611319


Whilst modern society relies heavily on computers few of us fully understand how they work. In this book Charles Petzold takes us on a journey from Morse code to the modern computer showing how codes are at the heart of every piece of computer hardware and software. To explain how computers work we are shown how you would go about building one from scratch using nothing more complex than 19th century telegraph equipment. All computer science students should read this book and anyone who wants to understand what goes on inside a modern computer will find this book interesting. Well worth a read!

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The Annotated Turing

Author: Charles Petzold, Alan Turing
Paperback: 372 pages
ISBN: 9780470229057


In 1936 Alan Turing published a 36 page paper entitled "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem". It is widely acknowledged that this paper was one of the corner stones in the development of the digital computer. Unfortunately for most of us the paper is almost unreadable. In this brilliant book Charles Petzold expands the 36 page paper into a 372 page explanation making the paper accessible to a much wider audience. Should be compulsory reading for any computer scientist.

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