Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age

by Paul E. Ceruzzi

Chronicles the progressive penetration of computing into every aspect of flight technology, from the end of World War II to the present

270 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 1989

About the author

Paul E. Ceruzzi is Curator at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution. He is the author of Computing: A Concise History, A History of Modern Computing, and Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945–2005, all published by the MIT Press, and other books.

Reviews

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1989, Paul Ceruzzi was an associate curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC; he has since been promoted curator. When the museum opened a new gallery on flight and computers, he wrote a companion book with lots of pretty pictures of fluid dynamics models, flight simulators, autopilots, the guidance system of the Minuteman missile, and the like. I have never heard of the Northrop SM-62 Snark, a subsonic intercontinental nuclear cruise missile, before. Its celestial-navigation guidance computer was an analog one; the company tried to fit a digital one and a hybrid digital-analog one into the missile, but this was just after the ENIAC, and digital computers weren't yet good enough. The Northrop engineers clearly did not share Matthew Crawford's contempt for electronic control systems. I am so glad this missile was never fired in anger!