Who is Charles Petzold?

Charles Petzold is a very well-known author of books about computers. He mostly wrote Windows Programming books for Microsoft as well as numerous articles for PC Magazine. However, there were several other books he wrote as well, and all of them received rave reviews from anyone that read them. He has an ability to explain things very well.

One book in particular that I would like to mention is The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine. It was a big help in preparing this website, and I do not exaggerate when I say that it would have taken me much, much, much longer to get through Alan Turing's paper if I did not have this book to explain it to me.

There is an old adage that says "Never judge a book by its cover!" This book is an exception to this adage! Not only is the book very good, but its cover is fascinating.

Throughout the years, I have seen many drawings of what various people imagined a Turing Machine would look like. I myself think that the best one, and the most thought-provoking one, is the one that appears on the cover of The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold.