Essinger's book perplexes me. It is both gripping and cringe-inducing. At heart Jacquard's Web is a history of the modern computer. But this heart has some serious pedantry and would-be elegance clotting its arteries. If the preceding metaphor feels lackluster, this book might scrape at your nerv...
This is a technique to calculate mathematical tables by repeated regular additions of the ‘differences’ between successive items in a mathematical series. A mathematical series is a set of terms in ordered succession, the value of each being determined by a specific relation to adjacent terms. Ma...