; a cursor was originally a sliding indicator on a slide-rule, pioneered by Isaac Newton; and computers were originally people, many of them women, who performed calculations, often in teams.
Most human computers were anonymous—in 1944 an American government committee even used “kilogirl” as a unit of computing power—but not all. Mr Houston explains how John Glenn, an American astronaut, insisted on having the trajectory of his spacecraft hand-checked byThe first purely electrical calculator, the desk-sized Casio 14-, showed where things were heading. Fierce competition between firms in America, Europe and Japan led to smaller, cheaper models.
And it was a calculating app—VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program—that kick-started personal computing. To do a quick sum today, it is quicker to open an app on your phone or computer than to reach into a drawer. Calculators, Mr Houston writes, are now “everywhere and nowhere at once”. His thesis adds up. He makes a convincing case, in sum, for the significance of the calculator.
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