Articles or book(s) about the functions behind a scientific calculator

[Helix]

(11-29-2018 08:03 PM)cdmackay Wrote:  

(11-29-2018 12:30 PM)Karl-Ludwig Butte Wrote:  Along the way you'll meet the Cambridge Computer Lab's EDSAC computer and its builder Maurice Wilkes

Often noted as the "inventor" of the subroutine. A friend of mine was a student of Prof Wilkes, and jokes that had he patented it, and received a royalty on every subroutine call…

I've been playing for several weeks with the EDSAC simulator.
This computer is very interesting! It was one of the very first stored-program computers, the first one to use a rudimentary assembler, and it led to the first practical book about programming: "the preparation of programs for an electronic digital computer", that I have the chance to own.
The second edition of this book is available here.
Although this second edition applied to a later version of the EDSAC, having different orders, the "initial orders" were unchanged, so many explanations are still relevant to the EDSAC simulator.

There is currently a project to replicate the EDSAC:
http://www.tnmoc.org/special-projects/edsac
I find the second video on this page, commented by Maurice Wilkes himself, fascinating.

By the way, I think that subroutines for the EDSAC should be credited more to David Wheeler, the programmer. The idea of subroutine was known earlier, by Mauchly, von Neumann or Goldstine.