Science seems to compete with the universe itself in fascinating us every day, and computer science is no doubt one of science s most fascinating disciplines. I remember saying good-bye to the last mainframe in town back in 1997 (yes, I had the chance to actually see a dinosaur); back then, no one would have imagined in their wildest dreams that we would be able to access the resources of super-fast data centers from our mobile devices anywhere in the world, especially a mere 12 years later. Today, it sounds rather normal if I tell you that you can run a virtual office completely online....

The one thing that more than anything else sets us apart from other species is our ability to invent and innovate. What was the one moment in history that led our ancestors to decide to pick up an object and use it as a tool to accomplish a certain task? Need or necessity? Hunger or survival? In this book you will be taken on a quick tour on the history of human inventions and will experience how these inventions contributed to almost all aspects of lives of billions of people who have ever set foot on the planet Earth. The book is divided into 5 chapters each focused on an important era of...