Customer Reviews

A Few Good Men from Univac

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4 star:		(1)
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Lots of first person inside information about the early days of commercial mainframe computers. The story covers Univac, Control Data Corporation (CDC) and Cray. The author tells how disenchanted Univac employees founded CDC and then later how Cray was founded when CDC managed to offend their lead designer Seymore Cray, whom they had lured away from Univac. The strange and incestuous relationships of the three companies is covered from an insider's point of view. The author reveals what a hotbed of computer development the Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis Minnesota) was in the '60s and '70s. It also has some absolutely fascinating information about Seymore Cray. Any serious student of computer history should have this book.

Spectacular book about early computers and lots of insight into long
running projects, what makes them tick, problems they encounter, etc.

Includes a great case study on the attempts to computerise the airline
industry, even has a picture of a prototype computer readable airline
ticket of the form that was very very briefly current before being replaced
by online tickets.

And my favourite quote from the book:

It is easy to judge when the morale of an engineering group is high. Just
listen to the conversations in the hallways and in the lunchroom. If the
engineers are talking about their projects, morale is high. If they are
talking about fishing or baseball scores, morale is so-so. If they are
talking about company management and organization, look out - morale
is poor.

I've read a lot of the "history of computers" books, and this one is a standout. It's great fun to read and avoids that POV that the first computer ever was the Apple I.