Ask HN: Favourite science history book of the 20th century?

9 pointsposted 18 hours ago
by bawis

Item id: 48981842

12 Comments

hash0

5 hours ago

"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan - that book was a life changer for me and has been with me ever since.

golly_ned

17 hours ago

Turing's cathedral, on the invention and development of the earliest digital computers just before, during, and after WWII. Lots of excellent detail, descriptions of the personalities and relationships of many interesting people, like von Neumann.

kamphey

11 hours ago

Might sound silly but I LOVE: Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections. They single handedly made me interested in how things were made, how things were on the inside. How things were engineered.

SoleilAbsolu

16 hours ago

Richard Hamming's "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn" is an insider's (Manhattan Project, Bell Labs) view of how computer science as we know it developed.

NishanStepak

10 hours ago

Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford and Critical Path by R Buckminster Fuller

rochansinha

16 hours ago

The Maniac, by Benjamin Labatut. It’s a fictionalised biography of John von Nuemann and the birth of artificial intelligence. Amazing , surreal and unique

pmdulaney

14 hours ago

How creative to think of writing such a thing! But von Meumann is a big enough intellect and personality to sustain it.

leobg

16 hours ago

The Faber Book of Science (Carey) Asimov’s New Guide to Science (Asimov) The Great Influenza (Barry)

andyjohnson0

16 hours ago

The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop

bigyabai

18 hours ago

Summa Technologiae

hash0

5 hours ago

Agreed, but with one caveat: That is the book detailling the history of future science!