IBM history books available

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

MIT press has the following excellent books available. They touch on
many of the issues discussed in this newsgroup.

"IBM's Early Computers A Technical History" By Charles Bashe, Lyle
Johnson, John Palmer and Emerson Pugh.

In describing the technical experiences of one company from the
beginning of the computer era, this book unfolds the challenges that
IBM's research and development laboratories faced, the technological
paths they chose, and how these choices affected the company and the
computer industry. It chronicles the transformation of IBM into a
computer company in a remarkably few years, discussing projects that
ended in frustration as well as the more successful ones, and
providing a sense of the atmosphere, the people, and the decision-
making processes involved during the company's rapid technological
transformation.IBM's Early Computers is a unique contribution to the
modern history of computers. It focuses on engineering alternatives
rather than business and general management considerations and reveals
the significance of imaginative solutions to problems in design and
technology, from initial experiments with electronics in digital
machines to the threshold of the System 360 era.

see:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ibms-early-computers


ALSO:

"IBM's 360 And Early 370 Systems" By Emerson Pugh, Lyle Johnson and
John Palmer

No new product offering has had greater impact on the computer
industry than the IBM System/360. IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems
describes the creation of this remarkable system and the developments
it spawned, including its successor, System/370. The authors tell how
System/360's widely-copied architecture came into being and how IBM
failed in an effort to replace it ten years later with a bold
development effort called FS, the Future System. Along the way they
detail the development of many computer innovations still in use,
among them semiconductor memories, the cache, floppy disks, and
Winchester disk files. They conclude by looking at issues involved in
managing research and development and striving for product
leadership.While numerous anecdotal and fragmentary accounts of System/
360 and System/370 development exist, this is the first comprehensive
account, a result of research into IBM records, published reports, and
interviews with over a hundred participants. Covering the period from
about 1960 to 1975, it highlights such important topics as the gamble
on hybrid circuits, conception and achievement of a unified product
line, memory and storage developments, software support, unique
problems at the high end of the line, monolithic integrated circuit
developments, and the trend toward terminal-oriented systems

see:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ibms-360-and-early-370-systems


"Building IBM" by Emerson Pugh. A shorter book, summarizing IBM's
history.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/building-ibm


MIT Press (a lot of stuff out there).
http://mitpress.mit.edu/