Can I go full-on retro and recommend a book from 1953? It's "Faster than thought" by B. V. Bowden... the middle section is a chapter for each of the machines then current in the UK (and a bonus chapter for America), the first chapter is a history but chapters 2 and 3 are about how the machines of the day worked. These were bit-serial machines and you might find it interesting reading - they had limited resources much as you do. The final section is on applications of computers.