Humanity's hunt for calculating devices probably started with the use of small pebbles to keep track of numbers. The counting inventions progressed through the abacus, early mechanical calculators, and other ingenious devices culminating in today's computers. In this new book, Thomas Russo chronicles 600 years of caculating devices, providing valuable information for historians and collectors alike. Stretching from ancient times to the earliest computers, this book provides an insight into breadth and depth of human creativity and drive. With 500 color photographs, descriptive captions, and a guide to current values, this is an essential guide in a field that is finding ever more enthusiasts.

Since 1973 Michael Adler's first book, The Writing Machine, has been affectionately called "the bible of the typewriter enthusiast." The renowned typewriter expert's new book, is sure to stimulate the same enthusiasm all over again, bringing you new and as yet unpublished insights into the origins of the invention itself in a detailed history of the machine.Over 250 photographs illustrate this definitive text, which includes comprehensive directories of typewriter inventions, makes, and models, and a concise guide to their values with advice on buying and collecting. How much? When? Where? How good? How rare? Who? Why? If you are looking for answers to any or all of these questions, Antique Typewriters is the ultimate reference book for you - from the novice typewriter collector to "seasoned old hand" enthusiasts and historians. - Description from the publisher.

This title looks at the data processing industry and practices in the United States with some comparative material on Europe and Asia. It beginning in the nineteenth-century “office appliance industry” - typewriters, tabulating machines, adding machines, and calculators - and moves through to the period when the computer became its primary tool. There is also a particular focus on IBM’s early history and offers short corporate histories of firms that include NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand.

This title is an overview of this ever changing technology from ancient times to the present day. The volume includes a glossary of terms, a timeline of important events, and a selected bibliography of useful resources for further information. Chapter one looks at the time before computers and chapter 2 looks at the first electronic computer and chapters three through seven moves from vacuum tubes to transistors, to microprocessors, personal computers, and networking.

This title is based on original interviews with surviving participants and the first study of John Mauchly and Presper Eckert's personal papers, "ENIAC". It tells the story of the race to complete the world's first computer.

Available online from the Internet Archive External
Available online from the Hathi Trust External
This is an early history of typewriters.

Holdings: 1881-1991
Available online from the Hathi Trust External
This is merger of Business Equipment Topics and Geyer's Stationer and includes articles and advertisements related to typewriters and office furniture and equipment. 1880 is in the Library's collection as Geyer's Stationer and Business Equipment Topics but is sometimes seen as Geyer's Office Dealer.
Geyer's also published other titles that were related that are worth a mention that would have been used by stationers to identify vendors.
Geyer's American Paper Trade Directory (1885-1890)
Geyer's "Who Makes It" Directory (1936, 1940, 1968-1988)
We wrote three blogs posts that illustrate a bit more about what is in this publication:
Geyer’s: Everything a Stationer Needs (part 1)
Geyer’s: More than Just Paper, Pens, & Pencils (part 2)
Geyer’s: Businesses and “How they Face the World” (part 3)

This title outlines the historical developments in computing technology, and describes historical aspects of calculation and concentrates on the devices used to aid people in their attempts at automating the arithmetic process. It highlights the major advances in arithmetic from the beginning of counting. There is a good timeline of the long history including Far East, the Greeks, the Egyptians with a very detailed bibliography.

The chapters cover the beginning through to the typewriter, word processing, and personal computers and workstations. It also looks at desktop typesetting, printing from computers, data storage, desktop graphic design, etc. There are also chapters on people and programs including Steve Jobs and Apple, Paul Brainerd and Pagemaker, QuarkxPress, Adobe, etc.

Available online from the Hathi Trust External
This is an early work looking at the history and development of the typewriter written while new models were being introduced and it includes an index by manufacturer/model. The author indicates in the preface "Development may therefore be looked for along the line of new uses and adaptations of the writing machine to purposes at this time not thought of, particularly in connection with invoicing, bookkeeping, etc." Chapters cover the general history, different types depending on where the carriage is located, European typewriters, index machines, use of typewriters in telegraphy.

This title traces the development laboratories faced and chronicles the transformation of IBM into a computer company. The book's chapters survey the card machine era and then cover electronic calculation, the magnetic drum calculator, the Defense Calculator and other first-generation products, ferrite core memories, magnetic tape, and disk storage development, programming, transistors, "Project Stretch" high-speed printers, research, and new-product-line considerations.

Holdings: 1979-2015
These are also part of the IEEE Xplore product and is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1979 as Annals of the History of Computing.

This title is grouped among a few themes and companies with specific discussion devoted particular people. Here are a few:
Analytical Engines - Charles Babbage, Merrifield, Major-General H. P. Babbage, Percy E. Ludgate, Leonardo Torres Y Quevedo, L. Couffignal.
Tabulating Machines - H. Hollerith, L. Couffignal, H.-J. Dreyer, A. Walther
IBM - Howard Aiken, Howard H. Aiken, Grace M. Hopper, W. J. Eckert, John W. Sheldon, Liston Tatum
Bell - G. R. Stibitz, O. Cesareo, Joseph Juley, Franz L. Alt
This edition and a later 1982 edition are available via SpringerLink data product (the Library does subscribe).

This title is more of a literary history of word processing and adoption of word processing where some authors embraced it as a marvel while others decried it as the death of literature. The author examines how the interests and ideals of creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution.

This volume covers the time period from the 1829 Burt Machine, the first to be issued a patent, to 20th century models. Over 280 different varieties include the Dollar, Ford, Hammond, Oliver, Remington, L. C. Smith, and Underwood, etc.

Holdings:1905-2005
This title merged with Geyer's Stationer to become Geyer's Stationer and Business Equipment Topics. It is later known as Multifunctional Specification Guide. It predominantly covers typewriters but it also includes advertisements, images, and articles related to office furniture. Some digitized copies of this are available online from the Hathi Trust External .

First Published in 1973, The Writing Machine presents a comprehensive history of the typewriter. Michael Adler not only investigated the history of the machine but also started collecting typewriters, because of the difficulty of discovering what these old machines looked like. Then he found there were other collectors all over the world who supplied him with such a wealth of data that he had eventually to limit the scope of his 'history'. There are hundreds and hundreds of makes and models of 'conventional' front-stroke, type bar machines with four-row keyboards, but they were virtually all the same. It is the unconventional ones that are interesting, and it is on these that the author concentrates. The book is amusing as well as informative, and it ends with a complete catalogue of 'unconventional' typewriters manufactured up to the 1930s, when the 'conventional' machine had become universal. This book is a must read for anyone interested to learn about the writing machine. - Description from the publisher. This title is available though the database Taylor & Francis eBooks.