A COMPUTER PERSPECTIVE
The Office of Charles & Ray Eames
[Office of] Charles & Ray Eames: A COMPUTER PERSPECTIVE [A sequence of 20th century ideas, events, and artifacts from the history of the information machine]. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. First edition. Square quarto. Cloth and leatherette boards titled in silver. Printed glassine dust jacket. 174 pp. Fully illustrated. Fragile (and scarce) glassine jacket with single chip to lower front panel wrapped around to spine heel. Textblock edges lightly spotted. The presence of the dust wrapper makes this an unusual and very desireable edition: a nearly fine copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
9x 9 hardcover book with 174 pages and many images based on the exhibition at the IBM Corporate Exhibit Center that opened in 1971 and ran through 1975. Book design by Paul Bruhwiler, Inc. for the Office of Ray and Charles Eames. Edited by Glen Fleck. Produced by Robert Staples. Introduction by I. Bernard Cohen.
A truly stunning volume in terms of design and production -- selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) for "50 (best designed) Books of the Year" in the year of publication.
A Computer Perspective is an illustrated essay on the origins and first lines of development of the computer. The complex network of creative forces and social pressures that have produced the computer is personified here in the creators of instruments of computation, and their machines or tables; the inventors of mathematical or logical concepts and their applications; and the fabricators of practical devices to serve the immediate needs of government, commerce, engineering, and science.
The book is based on an exhibition conceived and assembled for International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation. Like the exhibition, it is not a history in the narrow sense of a chronology of concepts and devices. Yet these pages actually display more true history (in relation to the computer) than many more conventional presentations of the development of science and technology.
The first of many Eames Office exhibitions designed for IBM, A Computer Perspective charted the development of the computer from 1890 to 1950. This exhibition included vintage and modern machines and a densely-layered six-paneled History Wall that incorporated computer artifacts, documents, and photographs mounted at various depths. A Computer Perspective included a multiscreen slide show of 500 images called AV Rack, which highlighted the newest computer applications at that time. It also featured an interactive computer game of “Twenty Questions,” in which visitors tried to guess which subject (animal, vegetable, or mineral) the computer had selected.
”Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects, etc., . . . the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” — Charles Eames
Charles (1907 – 1978) and Ray Eames (1912 – 1988) created more than a look with their bent plywood chairs or molded fiberglass seating. They had ideas about making a better world, one in which things were designed to fulfill the practical needs of ordinary people and bring greater simplicity and pleasure to our lives.
”. . . everything hangs on something else.” — Ray Eames
The Eameses adventurously pursued new ideas and forms with a sense of serious fun. Yet, it was rigorous discipline that allowed them to achieve perfection of form and mastery over materials. As Charles noted about the molded plywood chair, “Yes, it was a flash of inspiration,” he said, “a kind of 30-year flash.” Combining imagination and thought, art and science, Charles and Ray Eames created some of the most influential expressions of 20th century design – furniture that remains stylish, fresh and functional today.
And they didn't stop with furniture. The Eameses also created a highly innovative “case study” house in response to a magazine contest. They made films, including a seven-screen installation at the 1959 Moscow World's Fair, presented in a dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. They designed showrooms, invented toys and generally made the world a more interesting place to be. As the most important exponents of organic design, Charles and Ray Eames demonstrated how good design can improve quality of life and human understanding and knowledge.