Preface to the 2014 Edition. World Machines: The Steam Engine, the Railway, and the Computer

When this book was first published, in 1979, the personal computer was barely known and the Internet not dreamed of. The following thirty years brought the Digital Revolution, an event often compared in scale and impact to the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century Could it be that the railway, the accelerator of the Industrial Revolution, and the computer occupy different points along/on the same trajectory of machine evolution?