Learn How Computers Work with This Book - DailyBlogTips

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Learn How Computers Work with This Book Posted: 19 Mar 2013 07:58 AM PDT Only once after finishing a book I took the time to email the author to thank him for the masterpiece he had created, and it was after reading this one. The book is called CODE, The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. Despite the title, the book is not geared exclusively toward technical people. In fact I would recommend it for anyone who wants to learn how computers work, and how they were born in the first place. If you ever wondered how on earth you can press a couple of buttons on a calculator and instantly get the result of a complex multiplication, then this book is for you. Not only the technical aspects are explained very clearly and with simple words, but the author also creates a very fun narrative to follow along. Here’s a quote from the back cover: “What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries.” I was so pumped while reading the book that I decided to build my own 4-bit adder out of nothing more than wires, relays, switches and light bulbs. It’s basically a very rustic calculator that only performs addition, and only with numbers up to 4 bits (i.e., numbers can’t be larger than 15). Above you can see a picture of the adder. The beauty of building a binary adder is that it allows you to understand how everything works at the lowest levels, and once you grasp that you realize how you can evolve the circuitry to arrive at a more complex calculator or even at a generic computer like the one you are using right now. I spent around $100 to get the electronic components needed and one week planning the logic gates on paper and then soldering everything together. It was a blast though, and one of these days I am planning to take it a step further: building a calculator that can perform both addition and subtraction of multiple numbers (this makes the project more interesting because you need to build memory chips using flip-flops). Anyway here’s a video I recorded demonstrating how the 4-bit adder works: Original Post: Learn How Computers Work with This Book

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