Computing in the Middle Ages is designed for the lay reader who wishes to understand some of the background of the computer revolution. It provides an easily understood and amusing account of what took place in computer research between the 1950s and the 1980s. --from publisher description.

Offers the most comprehensive analysis and discussion of medievalist computer games to date. Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that is not only different, but in certain aspects, more profound than traditional literary or cinematic forms of medievalism. However, although it is important to understand the versions of the Middle Ages presented by these games, how players engage with these medievalist worlds, and why particular representational trends emerge in this most modern medium, there has hitherto been little scholarship devoted to them. This book explores the distinct nature of medievalism in digital games across a range of themes, from the portrayal of grotesque yet romantic conflict to conflicting depictions of the Church and religion. It likewise considers the distinctions between medievalist games and those of other periods, underlining their emphasis on fantasy, roleplay and hardcore elements, and their consequences for depictions of morality, race, gender and sexuality. Ultimately the book argues that while medievalist games are thoroughly influenced by medievalist and ludic tropes, they are nonetheless representative of a distinct new form of medievalism. It engages with the vast literature surrounding historical game studies, game design, and medievalism, and considers hundreds of games from across genres, from Assassin's Creed and Baldur's Gate to Crusader Kings and The Witcher series. In doing so, it provides a vital illustration of the state of the field and a cornerstone for future research and teaching.

This important and overdue book examines illuminated manuscripts and other book arts of the Global Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated or decorated books—like today’s museums—preserve a rich array of information about how premodern peoples conceived of and perceived the world, its many cultures, and everyone’s place in it. Often a Eurocentric field of study, manuscripts are prisms through which we can glimpse the interconnected global history of humanity. Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume’s multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas—an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages. Featuring more than 160 color illustrations, this wide-ranging and provocative collection is intended for all who are interested in engaging in a dialogue about how books and other textual objects contributed to world-making strategies from about 400 to 1600.

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This is the story of a young boy and some of his experiences growing up in the Southern part of the United States in the 40's and 50's of this twentieth century. It includes some accounts of incidents that are deeply filled with pathos and sadness. However, in contrast it climbs the heights of happiness and unfettered joy of the carefree days of southern culture. It is not only his story, but the interactions of parents, siblings, and other kin and also the, rare to this age, endearing, educational, and just simple fun of grandparents and even great-grandparents. The scope is wide and yet focused enough to enable one to become familiar with the people and places in a personal way. History, biography, humor, entertainment-it is all of the above.

This book charts the take-up of IT in Britain, as seen through the eyes of one company. It examines how the dawn of the digital computer age in Britain took place for different applications, from early government-sponsored work on secret defence projects, to the growth of the market for Elliott computers for civil applications. Features: charts the establishment of Elliott’s Borehamwood Research Laboratories, and the roles played by John Coales and Leon Bagrit; examines early Elliott digital computers designed for classified military applications and for GCHQ; describes the analogue computers developed by Elliott-Automation; reviews the development of the first commercial Elliot computers and the growth of applications in industrial automation; includes a history of airborne computers by a former director of Elliott Flight Automation; discusses the computer architectures and systems software for Elliott computers; investigates the mergers, takeovers and eventual closure of the Borehamwood laboratories.

The Middle Ages (c.500-1500) includes a thousand years of European history. In this Very Short Introduction Miri Rubin tells the story of the times through the people and their lifestyles. Including stories of kingship and Christian salvation, agriculture and trade, Rubin demonstrates the remarkable nature and legacy of the Middle Ages.

Medieval Studies and the Computer focuses on the use of computers in medieval studies and humanities research. Topics covered range from encoding and concording texts to the use of conceptual glossaries by medievalists, as well as the use of computers for compiling Middle English lexicography and the Wisconsin Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language. A computer analysis of metrical patterns in the epic Beowulf and of Notker Labeo's Old High German is also presented. Comprised of 26 chapters, this volume begins by discussing "contexts" in concordances and the set of conventions employed in text encoding. The reader is then introduced to the series of initiatives undertaken in Belgium to study Latin literature and linguistics; the use of conceptual glossaries by medieval scholars; and the use of the computer to make a word list of the Decretum Gratiani and to study Geoffrey Chaucer's vocabulary. Subsequent chapters discuss a computer program called KLIC (Key Letter In Context) for graphological analysis; a set of routines written in SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language) for use by social historians in quantitative analysis or text processing; and the use of Mark IV, a general-purpose file management system, to analyze medieval charters. This book will be of interest to medievalists, social historians, students and scholars of humanities, and computer scientists.

Did you know . . . • Ancient cultures measured time accurately with water clocks? • An engineer in the first century B.C. designed an odometer to calculate distance traveled? • People computed the first values of pi about four thousand years ago? Computing technology is as old as human society itself. The first humans on Earth used basic computing skills. They counted by carving tally marks in bone. They used body parts and basic tools to measure. Over the centuries, ancient peoples learned more about computing. People in the ancient Middle East used scales to measure goods for trading. The ancient Egyptians wrote textbooks including multiplication and division problems. The ancient Chinese developed an abacus for speedy calculations. Ancient Greeks made advances in geometry. What kinds of tools and techniques did ancient mathematicians use? Which of their inventions and discoveries have stood the test of time? And how did the ancients set the stage for our own modern computing? Learn more in Ancient Computing Technology.

This volume traces back the history of interaction between the “computational” or “algorithmic” aspects of elementary mathematics and mathematics education throughout ages. More specifically, the examples of mathematical practices analyzed by the historians of mathematics and mathematics education who authored the chapters in the present collection show that the development (and, in some cases, decline) of counting devices and related computational practices needs to be considered within a particular context to which they arguably belonged, namely, the context of mathematics instruction; in their contributions the authors also explore the role that the instruments played in formation of didactical approaches in various mathematical traditions, stretching from Ancient Mesopotamia to the 20th century Europe and North America.