Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator

by Keith Houston

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1324086394
• ISBN13: 9781324086390
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 384 Pages