What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries.
Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who’s ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines.
It’s a cleverly illustrated and eminently comprehensible story—and along the way, you’ll discover you’ve gained a real context for understanding today’s world of PCs, digital media, and the Internet. No matter what your level of technical savvy, CODE will charm you—and perhaps even awaken the technophile within.
Chapter 2. Codes and Combinations
Chapter 3. Braille and Binary Codes
Chapter 4. Anatomy of a Flashlight
Chapter 5. Communicating Around Corners
Chapter 6. Logic with Switches
Chapter 7. Telegraphs and Relays
Chapter 12. Bytes and Hexadecimal
Chapter 13. From ASCII to Unicode
Chapter 14. Adding with Logic Gates
Chapter 16. But What About Subtraction?
Chapter 17. Feedback and Flip-Flops
Chapter 18. Let’s Build a Clock!
Chapter 19. An Assemblage of Memory
Chapter 20. Automating Arithmetic
Chapter 21. The Arithmetic Logic Unit
Chapter 22. Registers and Busses
Chapter 23. CPU Control Signals
Chapter 24. Loops, Jumps, and Calls
Chapter 26. The Operating System