Africa and mathematics: from colonial findings back to the Ishango Rods

Grand Vizier who appears in Chapter 5 with his demonstration of the power of exponentiation. The narrative is mostly European and USA-centric – Grand Vizier notwithstanding – and so it is somewhat surprising how US-biased the view of theoretical computing is. Awhole chapter is devoted to the topic of complexity theory, a notion of which is described as ‘the key to the most important idea in computer science’ (159): which seems odd, given that in Europe there is very little focus on complexity in a thriving theoretical computing community. One final slight niggle: throughout the book Steiglitz teases the notion that analogue computing machines might be capable of doing things that digital ones cannot. When this topic is directly addressed in Chapter 11, however, he is quite emphatic that this seems very unlikely. It is an odd sticking point in an otherwise very coherent book. In summary: The Discrete Charm of the Machine packs a lot of ideas into a rather slim and very readable work, nicely explaining most of the technical points that are involved in digital computing at a hardware level. There is a lack of detail in some places and too much in others, but overall the interested reader will find a lot to like here (and in the broad variety of suggested further reading): as long as they do not mistake it for a history book!