This book covers the history of an important window of the computer era from about 1950 to 1970. No one proclaimed it: computing evolved haphazardly, as people and equipment sparked progress. Academics and engineers invented the computer in several places at more or less the same time, but it was a different profession—programming—that ushered it into business, government and defence. More recently of course, computing in the form of phones and tablets has become accessible to over five billion people around the world. What was originally intended solely as an arithmetic machine evolved in less than a century into a cornerstone of global society. No one saw this coming.The book will appeal to historians and teachers of technology and sociology; it should also resonate with managers, technologists and politicians. In addition, anyone who has ever wondered where the phone in their pocket came from, or how their PC and iPad came to be, will also be interested in the early days of computing, how the pioneers laid the platform to the global social revolution which is still upon us.