Eniac

Inventions are invariably a tricky business. With very few exceptions, not many things sprang forth fully-formed from the minds of one (or two, or whatever) people. Even Isaac Newton reminded people of the ideas of those who came before him, when discussing his genius. This is not to diminish those inventors, but to point out that Ford didn't invent the automobile, Edison didn't invent the lightbulb, and if Bell was the first to crank out a telephone, it was by maybe a month. Tops.

The computer is no different. A number of different people were working in the space of electronic calculating machines, to various degrees of “electronic” and “actually having it work.” The two main inventors of the ENIAC machine, Mauchley and Eckert, have been (in the author's view — I haven't read around enough to make a judgment, though Wikipedia backs him up) relegated both in terms of their invention itself (pre-empted by a “digital computer” called the ABC that could only do one operation and, by the way, never actually worked) as well as their role in it, as various collaborators and hangers-on strove to take the credit.

McCartney goes in for a deep dive, sourcing journals, interviews and various papers to restore the Digital Dyad (terrible name for a superhero team) to their rightful place in history. He traces them from their nerdy, tinkering roots through the creation of the ENIAC (and its voluminous red tape) through to the (understandably slightly bitter) ends of their lives. Eckert, for one, always hoped that history would prove to be a more fair arbiter of their role in computing history; this book is a good step in that direction.