--- title: "Book Review: \"Turing's Cathedral\"" url: https://daily.dev/posts/book-review-turing-s-cathedral--6rbdcbnty source_url: https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/700.php type: article source: "EmbeddedRelated" published: 2026-05-31T07:48:29.656Z updated: 2026-05-31T09:34:04.983Z tags: ["embedded", "computing-history"] reading_time: 7 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Book Review: "Turing's Cathedral" **[EmbeddedRelated](https://daily.dev/sources/embeddedrelated)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A review of George Dyson's 'Turing's Cathedral', a history of early computing centered on Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, John von Neumann, and the IAS machine (1940–1958). The reviewer praises Dyson's archival depth, narrative detail on hardware like vacuum tubes and mercury delay lines, and portrayal of the social dynamics among early computing pioneers. However, the reviewer criticizes Dyson's vague and hand-wavy explanations of software concepts, unconventional terminology (calling programs 'codes'), and the absence of diagrams. Recommended for those interested in computing history, though readers seeking engaging prose should look to Levy's 'Hackers' or Kidder's 'Soul of a New Machine' instead. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Cathedral and the Catacombs](https://daily.dev/posts/the-cathedral-and-the-catacombs-7s3qnwecg) · Andrew Nesbitt · 28 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#embedded](https://daily.dev/tags/embedded), [#computing-history](https://daily.dev/tags/computing-history) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/book-review-turing-s-cathedral--6rbdcbnty)