author
Edmund Callis Berkeley
1909–1988
A lively early champion of computing, this mathematician and writer helped introduce big ideas about “thinking machines” to a broad audience long before computers became everyday tools. He also built and promoted small educational machines that made computing feel hands-on and approachable.
1 Audiobook
Giant brains; or, Machines that think
by Edmund Callis Berkeley
About the author
Born in 1909, he became one of the early public voices explaining what computers might become. He is best known for Giant Brains, or Machines That Think (1949), a book that brought early computing concepts to general readers in clear, imaginative language.
He was also deeply involved in the computing community itself. He co-founded the Association for Computing Machinery in 1947, worked with early large-scale computer projects, and later published Computers and People, helping keep discussion about computers active as the field was taking shape.
Beyond writing, he designed small demonstration machines including Simon, a simple relay-based computer intended to show how computation worked. That mix of technical knowledge, publishing, and public education made him an important bridge between the earliest computer pioneers and the wider reading public.