The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick is great. Starts with Ada Lovelace/Charles Babbage and goes on from there, I found it fascinating.
> Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to have been invented at the start of the eighteenth century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. But a study now shows that a kind of binary system was already in use 300 years earlier among the people of the tiny Pacific island of Mangareva in French Polynesia.
> Here was a messaging system that outpaced the best couriers, the fastest horses on good roads with way stations and relays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information
From "Polynesian People Used Binary Numbers 600 Years Ago" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polynesian-people... :
> Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to have been invented at the start of the eighteenth century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. But a study now shows that a kind of binary system was already in use 300 years earlier among the people of the tiny Pacific island of Mangareva in French Polynesia.