The Chip

What Hacker News says

1. BarbaryCoastApr 2023
   "The Chip" by T. R. Reid. Get the second edition, which updates the story with more recent developments.

   A history of the integrated circuit, starting from vacuum tubes and ending with the politics of today (-ish; it's a 2020 book).

   If you liked "The Soul of a New Machine", this is your jam.

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2. pjungwirJul 2018
   Can someone tell me what is so great about SotNM? (It even won a Pulitzer.) I read a bunch of computer history books last year, and these were all more interesting IMO:

   - John Gernter, The Idea Factory

   - T.R. Reid, The Chip

   - Stephen Levy, Hackers

   - Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late

   - Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning

   - Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work

   (Actually I read Levy & Lammers a long time ago, but they're both better than SotNM too.)

   Those were full of themes like patents and broad use of technology, interaction between government and private enterprise, monopolies, private research institutes and the need for profit, challenges commercializing your discoveries, the culture around early computer use, etc. They had profiles of famous computer pioneers. They told the history of tech I use every day.

   SotNM didn't have anyone I recognized and was about a machine I'd never heard of before. Its biggest theme was how overworked the engineers were (also present in those other books, but not as dominant), at the cost of their health and marriages, with little-to-no reward. It was monotonous and depressing.

   So what did other people appreciate about it? With books I don't expect to always "see" everything there on my own, so maybe someone can help me learn what I'm missing.

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3. pjungwirJan 2018
   If people are interested in tech monopolies, innovation, and government, here are some great books:

   - The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, by John Gertner: A running theme is how AT&T was motivated to "give back" to the country to avoid anti-monopoly action by the government. I take today's talk about Google/Facebook/Apple/Amazon to be a negotiating tactic to motivate them to act similarly, although I wouldn't be surprised to see real government involvement either.

   - The Chip by T. R. Reid: the invention of the integrated circuit near-simultaneously by two different people/companies.

   - Where Wizards Stay up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon: the origins of ARPANET at BBN.

   Two other closely-related themes in these books are:

   - Patents (a limited monopoly), and how the patents for both transistors and integrated circuits were licensed very freely, allowing much faster innovation.

   - Government spending, e.g. how the space race and arms buildup paid for the early years of IC development before they were commercially competitive with just wiring up lots of components.

   . . .

   OT, I found all these books more interesting than The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Although it won a Pulitzer, it never felt like any of it "mattered" in the same way. (I had never heard of the Data General Eclipse.) It just seemed like another story of engineers killing themselves with overwork.

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4. ganeumannJul 2015
   The most authoritative work is Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing (http://amzn.to/1TiHgqd). Because it's written by an academic, not a journalist, it also has a great bibliography and footnotes. Some of the works it cites that are very valuable in themselves, depending on your area of interest, are:

   - R. Hodeson, Crystal Fire (on the invention of the transistor), http://amzn.to/1RictfF

   - T.R. Reid, The Chip (on the IC), http://amzn.to/1Hdbu8w

   - E.W. Pugh, IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems, (on the evolution of computer architecture), http://amzn.to/1NKZcWQ

   Also, as others have mentioned, Soul of a New Machine is awesome.

   I feel like you may be asking about computer science, though, not computer hardware. If so, pickings are slim. Two that stand out are:

   - S. Rosenberg, Dreaming in Code, http://amzn.to/1HdbJk1 (Not really a history of code, just the history of a single project)

   - M. Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog, http://amzn.to/1RicYpS (which, while not quite as amazing as the others, is the only history of the software industry as a whole I know of.)

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5. pjungwirApr 2021
   In The Chip, T. R. Reid talks about how Kilby and Noyce (inventors of the integrated circuit) spent time reading through new patent applications every day/week. As programmers, we spend a lot of time reading blog posts, but it's possible to take it further than that. For a couple years I attended a database reading group every Friday at a local university, where each week we would discuss a paper someone was interested in. You may also have alumni access to interesting journals. Or A Morning Paper[0] is a more Readers Digest approach. It takes some intentional work, but it's fun and you learn a lot.

   [0] https://blog.acolyer.org/

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6. pjungwirSep 2017
   Even integrated circuits, according to The Chip by T.R. Reid. He writes that for several years they were too expensive to compete with wiring together discrete components, but suddenly the space race and arms race demanded small, light electronics, so government purchasing funded the early years of IC development. I don't know if he's right, but it sounds convincing.
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