Reading List?

[doug brantner]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a good book to read, something about the history of technology, or an autobiography of some sort. These are some books I've read, I'm looking for something along the same lines...

"Longitude", about John Harrison's invention of a clock that could withstand the rigors of keeping accurate time at sea, in the early/mid 1700s. As a byproduct he invented ball bearings, jewel bearings, and bi-metallic strips for temperature compensation. Excellent read.

"Empires of Light", a history of the AC/DC war between Tesla and Edison. As an electrician by trade, I wish there was more technical info in this book, but still a very interesting story.

I've also read Tesla's autobiography, which is absolutely fascinating. It's also very strange because there are a lot of parallels to Salvador Dali's autobiography, which is equally fascinating; both were eccentric geniuses in their fields.

Are there any good books about Bell Labs? Seems to be a lot of mysticism surrounding them... or maybe that's just because I used to watch a lot of Fringe on TV...

Thanks!

Doug

--
Doug Brantner
doug.b...@gmail.com
pretendtodiy.blogspot.com

[c f]

"The Victorian Internet" is a great book about the telegraph and how quickly it spread.

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[Foxx D'Gamma]

Though not in book format, I have some very excellent documentaries spanning the timeline of hacking. Starting from the late 70's and early 80's with "Hackers: Wizards of the electric age", to the later 80's and early 90's with 'The History of Hacking', leading into the later 90's when hacking started to become more of a which hunt with "Hacking: Outlaws and Angels". It covers everything from the inception of the computer age with the homebrew computer club and many notable names of fame of today like Richard Stallman and Steve Wozniak as very young men with insight and endeavor. Then covers the age of phone phreaks, and eventually into a bit of the skript kiddy world of hacking for not so savory reasons. MTV also did a REALLY bad hacking documentary, I scratched it from memory as it only covered media-hype hacking that was focused on more juvenile mischief and flagrantly criminal behavior.

I should be at craft night on Nov 27th, I can bring in my copies if you like and pass them forward.

~ Foxx

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 11:31 AM, doug brantner <doug.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Michael Jamet]

Hi Doug,

Some of these may be a stretch but here goes

- The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Sweeping History tracing War, technology and Science - Reads like a novel

- Soul of a New Machine - The frantic race to build a 32 bit super mini to compete with the VAX

- A Few Good Men From Univac - Fascinating view from WWII forward about Eckert/Mauchly, Sperry, Control Data and Cray

- When Computers Were Human - Talks about human calculation as a profession before and after WWII

- Lives of a Cell - This and the next by Lewis Thomas a well known Biologist

- The Youngest Science - Talks about the rise of medicine in the 20th century

- Surely You're Joking (Sort of a Feynman autobiography)

- Uncle Tungsten - Oliver Sacks discusses his early love of chemistry

Enjoy,

Michael

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[raphael]

http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171

Amazingly fun, and long.

> of /Fringe /on TV...

>
> Thanks!
>
> Doug
>
> --
> Doug Brantner

> doug.b...@gmail.com <mailto:doug.b...@gmail.com>
> pretendtodiy.blogspot.com <http://pretendtodiy.blogspot.com>

[doug brantner]

Thanks for the offer, Foxx, but I don't think I'll be there.

There are also some excellent online documentaries. Look up the BBC's "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" series on Youtube, and "The Machine that Changed the World" series on Google Video. Very interesting about the intersection of technology and culture.

I found them both on this site, which always has awesome stuff. Apologies for this specific link, but I think Tesla would appreciate it: http://blog.imaginaryfoundation.com/blog/10-14-2011/Rope+skipping+animated+gif

pretendtodiy.blogspot.com project blog

[Guan Yang]

Not a book, but almost as long as one:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

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[Ben Combee]

I also really liked "What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s
Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer' by John Markoff.

One great archive of telephone system information is
http://telecom.csail.mit.edu/ -- I used to read that regularly in the
early 90s back when USENET was big.

[Ken Boak]

Doug,  Michael

I agree

"The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracey Kidder from 1982 is a great read from a bygone industry - where most of New England seemed to be making minicomputers, and how a "second division" hardware team developed the Data General Nova - and beat the flagship super-mini to the marketplace.

I read it as a kid when it first came out - and thus I became a hardware engineer.

It's all ancient history now - and those kids just out of college are now in their 50's - but I think it deserves a place as a recod of what those early 80's were like in the computing industry - before globalisation.

It's available online IIRC.


Ken

[Ken Boak]

My mistake

Data General Eclipse - it was 30 years ago when I last read it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine


Ken

[Susan Tan]

Hi! 

Re-inventing the Wheel by Steve Kemper, a biography of celebrity engineer Dean Kamen, is really well-written and entertaining.

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[Dan Lavin]

Try The Cuckoo's Egg -- true story of computer espionage circa 1986.

You may also enjoy The Crying of Lot 49, fiction with technology references and a foreshadowing of the net.

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[Tymm Twillman]

"hackers: heroes of the computer revolution" (ca 1984) is a really good one.
"the puzzle palace: inside the national security agency..." I seem to recall being a good one.  Very different NSA from the current one, but still...

[Bryon Connolly]

"The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley" is about early Silicon Valley culture.

[Zimmer]

Thank you everyone for the suggestions, I want to read all these!

I humbly suggest "Best of 2600" since it's such an interesting slice-by-slice cross section of what hackers and technologists were thinking in the 1970s-2000s. 

I also suggest "The Idea Factory" by Pepper White, it's his autobiography of life at MIT in the 1980s, it's a quick, enjoyable read about overcoming severe tech challenges and coping (or not coping) with a very steep learning curve, something I'm sure we can all relate to.

On Oct 21, 2011, at 13:38, Bryon Connolly <bryonc...@gmail.com> wrote:

"The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley" is about early Silicon Valley culture.

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[Michael Shiloh]

This is a brilliant conversation. Can a summary be made on the wiki?
I'd like to propose it to the MAKE blog as well, or even an article in
a future issue of MAKE.

[Samuel Messing]

I really enjoyed "The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood", which is kind of a history of Information theory, dawn of the Internet, etc.

S

[Will Suter]

big bump for Soul of a New Machine. It was several years ago when I read it, but what I recall as being the most interesting thing about it was its documentation of humans crossing a sort of invention threshold, when we started collaborating to engineer machines that were more complex than any one individual could fully understand in one lifetime. If I remember correctly.

It's a bit of a gimmie, but The Hacker's Dictionary is classic, if it hasn't been mentioned.

My first post. Hi everyone!

-will

William Jacob Rockhill Suter

[Jesse Sanford]

thats a great idea. i second the wiki.

Sent from Space!