Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Electronic calculating-machines

Source: tumblr
Today I want to draw attention to a very special (dusty and possibly moldy) old book we have in our collection, a book about electronic calculating-machines. Yep, that hyphen is meant to be there.

Electronic computers : fundamentals, systems, and applications / with the cooperation of Hans W. Gschwind, Martin G. Jaenke, and Robert G. Tantzen. Vienna : Springer ; Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1961.

This book is apparently 235 pages long, has illustrations and diagrams, and has a spine length of 23 cm. It also includes bibliographies. Most importantly, though, it has a subject heading of "electronic calculating-machines". Totally avec hyphen.

I looked up this subject heading on Library of Congress Authorities and found that, unsurprisingly, it's been superseded by a brand spankin' new authority heading:

C o m p u t e r s