Brinton Ahlin, Panteleymon Anastasakis, Radhika Banerjee, Travis Berger, Alex Boden, Yuxi Chen, Wanning Du, Mai Duong, Jon Franklin, Aarathi Garimella, Magnus Sveinn Helgason, Marcus Holmlund, Jingyi Huang, Liwei Huang, Anniki Laine, Xiaowei Liang, Jianfeng Liu, Sasha Nichols-Geerdes, Joseph Ogega, Eugene Pooley, Lingfeng Sun, Minqian Wang, Qian Wang, Qinzheng Xu, Qian Yang, Yuanshun Yao, Lingfeng Ye, Soomin Yoon, Muqing Yue, Yilin Zhai, Yiqun Zhang, Sylvia Zheng, Ying Zhu, and Jialu Zhong provided invaluable research assistance. Laurie Derechin and George Green helped greatly by suggesting some of their students as research assistants.
Special thanks are due to Anna Martin for generously sharing not only early drafts of her biography of Dionysius Lardner, but also her source materials.
The Computer Science Department at the University College London provided a visiting professorship in the fall of 2008 that greatly helped in the work on this project. Technical support from the Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota was extremely helpful. Last but not least, the financial support from an ADC Chair at the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota, as well as the semester research leave in the fall of 2008 and the sabbaticals during the 2009--2010 and 2016--2017 academic years are gratefully acknowledged.
In addition, I thank Muayyad Al-Chalabi, Ron Alquist, Guy Almes, Ross Anderson, Joel Baer, Alex Barber, John Barney, Neil Barton, Donald Beadles, Ari Belenkiy, Bonnie Bennett, Dan Bogart, Richard Bonney, Alain Bourdeau de Fontenay, Grahame Boyes, Philip Brassett, Peter Brown, Rob Brown, Janet Browne, Dave Burstein, Frank Byrd, Frances Cairncross, Gareth Campbell, Robert Cannon, Steven Cherry, Judi Clark, Kate Colquhoun, Frank Coluccio, Douglas Comer, Steve Crandall, Janos Csirik, Plato Demos, Tim Denton, Rolf De Vegt, Andrew Dow, Stephen Elliott, Dennis Fazio, Mordechai Feingold, Matthew Forrester, Amy Friedlander, Michael Friendly, Joshua Gans, Martin Geddes, Patrick Gilmore, Lars Godell, Bonnie Goldsborough, Fred Goldstein, Frode Greisen, David Alan Grier, Goulven Guilcher, John Greatrex, Wendy Grossman, Candace Guite, Carl Haacke, Joe Hamelin, Ellen Harris, Jo Hays, Jeff Hecht, Cormac Herley, Chris Hinde, Gordon Holmes, Tim Horan, Yectli Huerta, Ralph Hyre, Charles Jackson, Christopher Jakes, Richard John, Brewster Kahle, David Kahn, Steve Kamman, Aman Kapoor, Frank Kelly, Kalevi Kilkki, Dorian Kim, Jon Kleinberg, Jan Klovland, Todd Koffman, Eric Krapf, John Lee, Laurent Le Maux, Wolter Lemstra, David Levinson, Wendy Lougee, Bryan Lyles, Sean McCartney, Bruce McCullough, Om Malik, Scott Marcus, Stephen Mason, Bob Metcalfe, George Michaelson, Ranald Michie, Min, Tom Misa, Jay Muthuswamy, Larry Neal, Scott Nelson, Peter Neumann, Michael Odlyzko, Paul Odlyzko, Andy Oram, Jorge Ortiz, Michael Palmer, Hui Pan, Robert Patten, Arno Penzias, Carla Rahn Phillips, Paul Polishuk, Alex Preda, Francis Reid, Susan E. Reid, Alex Roland, Hendrik Rood, Richard Rumelt, Tom Ruwart, John Ryan, Gil Sadka, Christian Sandvig, Angela Sasse, Simon Schaffer, Dave Schaeffer, Steven Schear, Henning Schulzrinne, Matthew Searle, Soumya Sen, Peter Sevcik, Simon Sleight, Stephen Snobelen, Tom Soja, Arthur Solomon, Mark Stahlman, Tom Stluka, Tim Stronge, Bart Stuck, Arielle Sumits, Aaron Swartz, Richard Sylla, Tony Tauber, Roger Taylor, Joel Tropp, Andrey Ukhov, Hal Varian, Francois Velde, Joost van der Vleuten, Philip Webre, Sara Wedeman, John van Wyhe, Ellis Weinberger, Bill Woodcock, Jeremy Wormell, Jeff Young, and Joe Zink for providing helpful information, comments, and suggestions.
Great thanks are due to the many institutions whose collections were
consulted, in particular
Archives & Research Collections at McMaster University,
Archives & Research Collections at the Senate House Library,
Baker Library of the Harvard Business School,
Bank of England Archive,
Barclays Group Archives,
Bodleian Library of Oxford University,
Bristol Central Reference Library,
British Library,
Brunel University,
Cadbury Research Library of the University of Birmingham,
California State Library,
Cambridge Central Library,
Cheshire Record Office,
City University Library,
Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library,
Cornell University,
Coutts & Co Archives,
Down House Archives of English Heritage,
Duke University's Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library,
Durham University Archives and Special Collections,
Emmanuel College (University of Cambridge),
Folger Shakespeare Library,
Garrick Club Library,
Guildhall Library,
C. Hoare & Co.,
Houghton Library of Harvard University,
King's College (University of Cambridge),
Leicester Libraries,
Leicestershire Records Office,
Leiden University Library Special Collections,
Library of Congress,
London Metropolitan Archives,
London School of Economics,
Macclesfield Library,
National Archives (of UK),
National Library of Scotland,
Newberry Library,
New York Public Library,
Parliamentary Archives,
RBS Archives,
Royal Institution of Great Britain,
Royal Library of Belgium,
Science Museum (of London) Library,
Staffordshire Record Office,
Stanford University,
Stationers' Company Archive,
Times Newspapers Ltd Archive,
Trinity College (Dublin),
University College London,
University of California at Santa Barbara,
University of Cambridge,
University of Chicago,
University of Guelph,
University of London,
University of Michigan,
University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center for Special Collections,
University of Pittsburgh,
University of St Andrews,
Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
and York Minster Library (University of York).
The Dell'Oro Group, Optical Society of America, and RHK made some of their
materials available, and Thomson Gale kindly provided
early guest access to
its online version of The Times.
Special thanks are due to the University of Minnesota Libraries,
especially its James Ford Bell Library and its interlibrary loan staff.