A Machine Made this Book: Ten Sketches of Computer Science

How do we decide where to put ink on a page to draw letters and pictures? How can computers represent all the world s languages and writing systems? What exactly is a computer program, what and how does it calculate, and how can we build one? Can we compress information to make it easier to store and quicker to transmit? How do newspapers print photographs with grey tones using just black ink and white paper? How are paragraphs laid out automatically on a page and split across multiple pages?

In A Machine Made this Book, using examples from the publishing industry, John Whitington introduces the fascinating discipline of Computer Science to the uninitiated.

Chapters:

• Putting Marks on Paper
• Letter Forms
• Storing Words
• Looking and Finding
• Typing it In
• Saving Space
• Doing Sums
• Grey Areas
• Our Typeface
• Words to Paragraphs