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New Taschen book on the history of the computer (wallpaper.com)
149 points by keiferski on May 30, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 38 comments


This books appears to be using photography from docubyte.com.

I have two prints from the Guide To Computing series and they’re both excellent.


The photos in https://www.docubyte.com/projects/guide-to-computing/ are absolutely amazing, and I like the little touches like animation of blinking lights. I'd wish this was also available as a book.


Taschen books are always something special. I mostly associate them with art.


They're awesome. Their Klimt hard cover book is a treat.

Their prices don't depreciate either.


Shouldn't forget to mention, not all titles are SFW.


Taschen is German for "pockets" (or "bags"). Paperback in German is "Taschenbuch", literally "pockets book". This title was very confusing to me.


It’s just the founder’s last name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedikt_Taschen


Since the founder is German he’s certainly aware of the double meaning.


He’s like Bilbo Baggins. Except taller, and German.


Benedikt owns the Chemosphere in LA; nice spot.


Taschen primarily makes quality artbooks in the trade paperback size instead of coffee table book size like most art books. So they are pocketsized artbooks, at least compared to most artbooks, few of their books actually would fit in any reasonable sized pocket due to their tendency to be in the thousand page range.


They make tons of coffee table books. Most of their books are larger than pocket size. Most are at least 8x11 and lots are size xl or the “Summo” size which is quite large.


As you are not using units for 8x11 I guess that's inches, which is a funny unit, considering this thread started about German meaning of "Taschenbuch"

8cm x 11cm = 3.14in x 4.33in

8in x 11in = 20cm x 28cm


Sumo comes with a stand made out of metal.


A pocket sized art book, that’s thousand of pages, that’s the size of the average paperback book. Hmm…

I am suspicious as to whether you have ever seen a taschen brand book before. They are not trade paperback size, they are coffee table books. According to Amazon they tend to be in the 500-600 range.


Taschen makes a variety of different books. They do indeed have a "pocket size" line about different artists, but I think it might be discontinued now. I have one here about Mozart.


Ah, that actually makes for a cool name, then.


While "Taschen" is the German (plural) word for "pockets" it is the last name of the book publisher too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedikt_Taschen


It's a pretty well known publisher, their books are usually very good.


The books from taschen are usually pretty, with very shallow texts, most of them sound like PR pieces


They publish the quintessential coffee table books. Pretty but shallow.


They published Oliver Byrne's modernist visual take on the first six books of Euclid's elements. It's not all shallow.


Yep probably, still room for some light and visually pleasing reading I guess! Just like I might enjoy watching some John Wick movie knowing full well it won’t go down in history like Citizen Kane.


The text appears in 3 languages side by side, so there is not much space for exposition.


When I visit Germany I love to have a Dönertaschen.


Seeing that it's also in this book (which I would like to buy, btw) I can't help but comment on the myth of the 'first bug' in computing: it's a historical fake, see for example here[1]

[1] https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-story-of-the-first-comput...


It's not a fake. It's just misattributed to Grace Hopper.

As for the claim that it's the origin of the word bug, that's just the typical exaggeration that befalls many stories. Memetic mutation turns everything into a story about superlatives. The text of the log book itself makes it clear that this is just the first time that the bug has been literally found, a comment that only makes sense if the phrase was already firmly established.


mmh we are saying the same thing, so I suppose there was a linguistic misunderstandig, English is not my native language


Is anyone else confused by what options are available when trying to order the book? I see two options:

- English, French, German

- English, Italian, Spanish

I'm concerned enough to not want to purchase it out of fear I might end up ordering a translation I cannot understand...


Usually the pictures have a bit of small text next to them. Don't expect full stories or documentary style text. You're not supposed to read these books, but skim through the pages and look at the pictures. The text is only there to give some context.

Think of it like the text next to a picture in the museum. That is also often only 2 or 3 sentences. And repeated in multiple languages.

So whichever you order, you'll get definitely English, no worries there.

Look, here you can zoom into the text, it's clearly three paragraphs, the first one repeated in three languages

https://taschen.makaira.media/taschen/image/upload/f_webp,w_...


There are two editions of the book. Each has the text in three languages. https://www.taschen.com/en/books/popculture/04692/the-comput...


They are in all three languages simultaneously, side by side. If you can read English, either one will be fine for you.


The article mentions that Taschen is known for trilingual books.


I think the word "Taschen" does not appear often enough on that website.


I wonder who published the book


Giant books like Taschen's will be the big survivors of the e-reader onslaught because it provides visual, tactile, and nostalgic dimensions.


Interesting lack of vision on the picture phone: handset, rotor dial and b&w. I can see the last on bandwidth, but keeping one’s hand tied up??


We still default to this handset style on audiophones and the experience is much better for the other end. I wish people would zoom using handsets (when headsets not available).

I don’t see why when we add video we would automatically drop the handset, or rather why would we keep on designing handset phones when hands free technology exists.




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