Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator
Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. The calculator is dead; long live the calculator.
In this witty mathematic and social history, Keith Houston transports readers from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, where a Jewish engineer calculated for his life at Buchenwald, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators. At every turn, Houston is a scholarly, affable guide to this global history of invention. Empire of the Sum will appeal to math lovers, history buffs, and anyone seeking to understand our trajectory to the computer age.
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Keith Houston is the author of Empire of the Sum, Shady Characters, and The Book. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Mental Floss, and on BBC Culture and Literary Hub. He lives in Linlithgow, Scotland.
Houston serves as a fantastically insightful and accessible tour guide on this charming journey of an oft-overlooked invention that changed the world and, in its demise, radically changed the world once again.--Blake J. Harris, author of The History of the Future and Console Wars
An entertaining, informative story about a technology that defined an era.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
Empire of the Sum spans centuries and reaches across the universe, always coming back to humanity's craving for calculating machines in all their diverse forms. I dare you to reach the end of this book and not be irresistibly charmed by both the pocket calculator and Keith Houston's witty, gregarious prose.--Nathalia Holt, New York Times best-selling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls
Houston's narrative is full of oddballs, many of them brilliant...-- "New York Times Book Review"
Walking readers from a 42,000-year-old counting aid to digital spreadsheets, the book provides a breezy mathematical history tour through the development of number systems, slide rules, mechanical calculators and microchips.-- "Nature"
Houston's sprightly history aims to give the calculator the recognition it deserves as a stepping stone to the digital era... He makes a convincing case, in sum, for the significance of the calculator.-- "The Economist"
