Thoughts on the culture that gave birth to the personal computer (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on the culture that gave birth to the personal computer (2013)

bricklin.com

30 pointshoggle13 comments

Isaacson's sketch has been deleted from medium.com, but this appears to be a copy:

http://kielarowski.net/2013/12/20/the-culture-that-gave-birt...

I hope Isaacson doesn't overlook J.C.R. Licklider's contributions. M. Mitchell Waldrop wrote an excellent book about that called The Dream Machine; here's a review:

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/9.10/streetcred.html?...

Paul E. Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing does a good job of filling in the story, as Bricklin wishes here that someone would do. It is especially good on the 1950's, 60's, and 70's, and the origins and legacy of DEC (Digital) and other companies and people that loomed large at the time, and were influential in creating our present world, but are not so well remembered nowadays.

Thanks, that sounds like the book I was looking for!

I just read it last week by chance and second the recommendation. It's not as good a book once the DEC era ends (I think Ceruzzi kind of loses interest in the modern era) but his coverage of mainframes and minicomputing era are really fantastic. I also highly recommend "DEC is dead! Long live DEC" as a good history of DEC's rise and fall.

As to the "Long live DEC!" I know of a company here in Austria which still deploys VMS machines (albeit not any more on Alpha but Itanium/HP Hardware iirc). Thanks for the book recommendation!

On a tangent - if you didn't like the Isaacson biography (it's pretty ... lacking ... isn't it?) and you haven't read the stuff on http://www.folklore.org or the book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_in_The_Valley - go do it, it's intelligently written first hand anecdotes from the beginning of the 80s at Apple.

Let's read up on history - Dan Bricklin certainly has wet my appetite for a book on Digital (even as a Unix guy ;) as well as the origins of VisiCalc and "spreadsheet" programs respectively (IMHO the closest tools non-programmers have to achieve programmer like powers and problem solving satisfaction).

A few books on computer / computing / internet history:

1953, Faster Than Thought, B.V. Bowden (British 1940s & 50s) https://archive.org/details/FasterThanThought

1984, The Home Computer Wars (Commodore, Atari, Apple) https://archive.org/details/The_Home_Computer_Wars http://www.amazon.com/The-Home-Computer-Wars-Commodore/dp/09...

1985, History of Computing Technology, Michael Williams (Abacus to IBM360) http://www.amazon.com/History-Computing-Technology-2nd-Editi...

1985, The Great Telecom Meltdown, Fred Goldstein (USA deregulation) http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/TELECOM_Digest_On...

2001, The Universal History of Computing, Georges Ifrah (Egypt to 1970s) http://www.amazon.com/The-Universal-History-Computing-Comput...

2002, Electronic Brains (UK, US & Ukraine soon after WWII) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/electronicbrains.shtml http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Brains-Stories-Dawn-Compute...

2008, Geeks Bearing Gifts, Ted Nelson (rants & factoids) http://www.amazon.com/Geeks-Bearing-Gifts-Ted-Nelson/dp/0578...

2010, Commodore, A Company on the Edge, Brian Bagnall (war stories from 6502 through C64, no Amiga) http://retroasylum.com/commodore-a-company-on-the-edge-revie... http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian-Bagnall/d...

2011, The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945–1976, John Harwood http://www.west86th.bgc.bard.edu/book-reviews/interface-ibm....

Thanks for that list - to add to it some lighter, at-the-beach reading as well:

1989, The Cuckoo's Egg (a lot of 80s Unix/Vax anecdotes as well as a great story and lots of good-old hippie culture :)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18154.The_Cuckoo_s_Egg

1996, Accidental Empires (a little frivolous but an enjoyable read nonetheless, focuses on beginnings of MS and Apple)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27652.Accidental_Empires

1992, Game Over (Nintendo and video game history mostly 80s)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/339584.Game_Over_Press_St...

2014, Console Wars (Sega and the video game / computer industry of the 80s and early 90s - somewhat of an answer to "Game Over")

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18505802-console-wars

Less people in this book but it's about computer history, right? Fascinating read, I didn't "finish" it yet - still great to dive into the book now and then:

2010, The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7754526-the-apollo-guidan...

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~OT: The last book really makes me want to see Notch's 0x10c come to live again as you would have been able to program your own fully emulated ship computer in that game, unfortunately it got canceled. I'm hoping some future No Man's Sky mod will be going in that direction!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0x10c#Gameplay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky

The Home Computer Wars is excellent, great insight into Tramiel, his various experiences prior, and how he made Commodore so successful during that period.

At this level in this subtree, hoggle's recommendations of Accidental Empires is strong endorsed, if for no other reason than the anecdote about how Intel, by then a very big company in revenues, possibly Fortune 500, was almost killed by a single well intentioned low level employee. Emphasizes how much more fragile tech companies are than old fashioned Fortune 500 companies.

The Cuckoo's Egg is a fantastic story in and of itself, about how a starving astrophysics grad student given a temporary sysadmin job went from a less than $1 accounting discrepancy to nailing down a KGB plot. One of the more interesting things is how the always publicity oriented FBI (best known way back when for bank robberies and kidnappings, infamous but easy to solve crimes), under who's remit this sort of counterintelligence was/is, wouldn't give the author the time of day (it didn't meet their $100K lost threshold). His best government contact was a delightfully colorful CIA guy (you'll love his snail mail address), who could only supply advice and connections.

If Digital means Digital Equipment Corporation, there was a biography of Ken Olsen that came out years ago, The Ultimate Entrepreneur. (I've never read it.) There is a badly formatted interview with Gordon Bell at http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/bell.htm, which has a lot about DEC in it.

DEC, yes :) the book looks very intriguing, much appreciated!

If I remember correctly, this book not only goes into technical details (skim the TOC in the Internet Archive's copy), but included higher level stuff, particularly a superb and universally useful insight into what distinguished the successful '70s minicomputer vendors: they all did an adequate job of everything essential, from hardware to documentation. E.g. I don't think anyone every bought a DEC computer for the quality and/or price/performance of their disk drives (the RK-05 might be an exception), but their disk offerings were at least adequate (modulo a few goofs when they made their own, long after this book was published).

Computer Engineering: A DEC View of Hardware Systems Design by C. Gordon Bell, J. Craig Mudge, John E. McNamara, and Kenneth H. Olson

(If you're not familiar with the first and last authors, your study of DEC history should fill you in, as cafard notes elsewhere in this thread.)

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Engineering-Hardware-Systems-...

https://archive.org/details/ComputerEngineeringADecViewOfHar...

Great stuff, thanks a lot!

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