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Tracy Kidder

The Soul of A New Machine Paperback – June 1, 2000

by Tracy Kidder (Author)

4.5 1,420 ratings

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Tracy Kidder's "riveting" (Washington Post) story of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech industry.

Computers have changed since 1981, when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.

The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the twentieth century.

"Fascinating...A surprisingly gripping account of people at work." --Wall Street Journal

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Back Bay Books
Publication date

June 1, 2000
Dimensions

5.55 x 1.1 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0316491977
ISBN-13

978-0316491976
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"It has the ring of truth....For readers who would like to know what it takes to make a computer, how computers are organized, and who the people are who put them together, I strongly recommend The Soul of a New Machine. I do not know anything quite like it".

-- Jeremy Bernstein, New York Review of Books

From the Back Cover

Computers have changed since 1981, when Tracy Kidder indelibly recorded the drama, comedy, and excitement of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market. What has changed little, however, is computer culture: the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the mystique of programmers, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations. By tracing computer culture to its roots, by exploring the "soul" of the "machine" that has revolutionized the world, Kidder succeeds as no other writer has done in capturing the essential spirit of the computer age.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Back Bay Books (June 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316491977
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316491976
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.55 x 1.1 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #38,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Computing Industry History
- #25 in History of Technology
- #76 in Company Business Profiles (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 1,420 ratings

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Tracy Kidder
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Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, My Detachment, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder lives in Massachusetts and Maine.
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Tracy Kidder
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4.5 out of 5

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PhilG

Real History

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2023

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Back before everybody carried a supercomputer in their pocket, computers were relatively rare, noisy, expensive machines. This is a Chronicle of the development of Data General's first 32 bit minicomputer. Very good read. I highly recommend it.

Helpful

Sachmo

An awesome documentary style book on the reality of what drives a project to completion

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2013

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This book is a non-fiction account of the development of a mini-computer in the 1980s. The book begins by describing the background: Data General, a computer company, has been recently leapfrogged by a competitor who put out a 32-bit mini computer system over their 16-bit system. To keep up with their major competitor (DEC), the company begins a development project for their own 32-bit mini computer.

The company HQ is based in Massachusetts. What complicates matters is that the CEO establishes a new R&D center in North Carolina where he hopes the new 32-bit mini computer will be built. The new R&D center however, creates a major rift between the engineers who stayed in Massachusetts and the ones who work in North Carolina - as both groups want to be in charge of development. A major feud begins, but basically the group in North Carolina wins and gets to build the new 32-bit system.

However, the story begins in Massachusetts....

Tom West, an engineering manager in Massachusetts, manages to convince the management that it would be worthwhile to have a 'back-up' 32-bit computer system, that was perhaps backwards compatible with their old 16-bit systems. It would be a sort of 'insurance' so to speak in case development efforts in North Carolina took too long.

With a handful of experienced engineers as team leaders, he recruits essentially fresh college graduates and works the hell out of them to create a rival 32-bit computer system.

Over the course of the book, it becomes apparent that the North Carolina facility - despite having more resources, money, engineers, etc. - will not in fact be able to launch their product in a timely fashion. West's team of new recruits really does need to release their product in order for the company to continue competing in the mini-computer market.

The book is not written so much on the technical details of the project, but rather is more of a 'documentary' of the experience of being on the product development team.

The level of detail this book captures, and at each level (from West's perspective, the perspective of a number of the fresh college graduates, his experienced Team Leaders who speculated on West's motives in driving everyone so hard, the background situation of the company and management) is perfect.

Looking back historically, one could easily just conclude that the Massachusetts team succeeded for all sorts of technical reasons. But there were a lot of interesting human reasons for why the project succeeded. For one, the project should have never been started in Massachusetts in the first place. The company management did not seem to have any clear idea of what to put their engineers to work on (or even really know what they were working on) and a wily manager was able to sneak the project by, masquerading it as something else.

As engineer on a product development team for a robotic system, I can 100% relate to this book.

The ridiculous management decisions, the company politics, engineers working insane hours on esoteric problems, the strange culture of engineers, the product launch and general lack of appreciation for the engineer's work afterwards - it's amazingly well captured in this book, and I was surprised at how my current company and previous company experiences relate so strongly to the product development described here.

What I liked most about it, was that a lot of the decisions made by West, the company, etc were highly irrational, if you looked at them from the company perspective. The company SHOULD have only had one group working on the development project. West SHOULD have explained to his team the importance of what they were working on and perhaps been more involved on the day to day decisions of the project, just as the VP of Engineering SHOULD have been more cognizant of what West's entire team was up to. (The author writes about 'mushroom management' in the book - keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em *edited by Amazon Censors*). But in reality, for often political reasons, feuds, the strange driven personality of a particular manager, the strange management practices of the CEO, all of these mistakes get made, and yet a 32-bit mini computer gets built and saves the company in the end anyway.

It's a great book because it is all true.

I am not sure how interesting this would be for someone that doesn't work in product development, but for me, I see this mistakes made in my company every day. It's amazing how much individual personalities, and strange coincidences can drive a project.

An additional tidbit, Wired magazine did a follow up with all of the engineers years after this book was written:

"[...]"

Google 'O, Engineers!', 'Soul of a New Machine, Wired' in case Amazon gets rid of the link.

A great book.

77 people found this helpful

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Mark Allen Ward

A must read for anyone associated with the IT industry

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2023

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This is an exceptionally important work. It tells a story about the development of a computer (machine) during the early days, when the physics of a computer and coding had just become separate disciplines. Truly, a must read for anyone associated with the IT industry.

3 people found this helpful

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What gives any new machine a "soul"?

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2012

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At this time of the year, I select a few books about diverse subjects and re-read them with the hope that new insights will occur that I missed previously. That is certainly true of this book (the second edition published in 1997 when I first read it) and James Gleick's Isaac Newton (2003). Dozens of other reviewers have already shared their reasons for thinking so highly of Tracy Kidder's account of Data General's efforts to create a new 32-bit superminicomputer. Here are three of mine.

First, I am grateful for being able to learn so much about Joseph Thomas "Tom" West III (1939-2011) and his contributions to the development of "the new machine." He led a project team (code-named "Eagle") that competed with another team (code-named "Fountainhead") within the Data General organization. Most of the drama in Kidder's narrative is created by the in-house competition to design a next-generation computer that could not only compete with but in fact win out in direct competition with a new 32-bit minicomputer brought to market by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). At least initially, West's group was generally viewed as a back-up {"second string") project team. However, over time....

Also, Kidder brilliantly develops a tension between two quite opposite mindsets. One is expressed by West: "Not everything worth doing is worth doing well" and "If you can do a quick-and-dirty job and it works, do it." Predictably, the engineers strongly disagreed and objected strenuously to being rushed to produce what they were certain would be an inferior product. They refused to cut corners, accept compromises, etc. West understood their concerns and in a perfect world would have accommodated them. However, he remained determined to not only beat DEC to market but also to retain dominance of that market thereafter.

Finally, Kidder provides his readers with still another opportunity to examine the dynamics of teamwork that is sustained under severe pressure from all manner of sources both within and beyond the given enterprise. As I proceeded through the book, I was again reminded of Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman's classic study of several great teams, Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration. Those groups include the Disney animators who created Dumbo, Snow White, and Pinocchio as well as those involved with the Manhattan Project and Lockheed's "Skunk Works." These and other teams were led by determined, at times driven leaders and were comprised of members who were quite different in terms of their talent, experience, and temperament. Those who led them were not "herding cats," a term widely attributed; indeed, they were leading an entire menagerie.

No brief commentary such as mine could possibly do full justice to the scope and depth of coverage that Tracy Kidder gives to one of several pivotal chapters in the history of computer technology. I am grateful for what I learned this time around that I had missed previously. I intend to re-read it again and meanwhile highly recommend the book to those who share my keen interest in the humanity on which the "soul" of any breakthrough technology depends. That was certainly true 35 years ago and it is even more true today.

8 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Paul Berger

Great read but text quality very poor

Reviewed in Australia on July 8, 2022

Verified Purchase

I repurchased this book as my original hardcopy was lent and never returned. This is a fantastic read and I highly recommend it. Completely captures the moment and is a pleasure read. Whilst quite technical, I feel anyone with interest in the early days of computer would enjoy it.
Unfortunately the current revision of the book is of very poor quality and the text is slightly blurry, which is why I have only given 4 stars.

C. Neale

Insider's view of a 32bit machine's creation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

This took me a while to get through. There are some sections which go into quite deep technical depth about how a particular chip worked. Whilst that might have been ok once to illustrate the complexity it seemed to be repeated.
But by the end it did feel very much like the journey, albeit shorter and just about this one machine, in the TV series Halt and Catch Fire. Pioneers, doing groundbreaking things, with no vast reference library and quite often inventing their own wheels, or making wheels out of wire.

I'd recommend it for anyone interested in feeling like you were in the team working to get their 32bit machine out of the door and working long hours to achieve it.

4 people found this helpful

dharmOS

Stunning account of early computer design

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2013

Verified Purchase

I read this book based on the mention in Shippy and Phipps' book about the PPC CPU in the Xbox 360 and PS3 (The Race for a New Game Machine). It is obvious where this later book takes its inspiration (it is laid out in a similar manner). However the original is the best.

This book is an account by Kidder, a non-techie journalist, of building a 4.5 MHz 32-bit computer, The Eagle, in the late 70s from discrete logic gates and before the advent of modern CPUs (like the Motorola 68000, Intel 8086).

The work to build such a computer is chronicled wonderfully, like a mission to the moon or deep below the sea. It starts with the project manager (Tom West), then his deputies and drills down to the juniors who designed the ALU, cache (each occupied a separate logic board in the day) etc (all from discrete logic gates!) and the team who wrote the microcode.

It tells the story from a non-technical viewpoint although you can recognise the design characteristics in a modern cpu. It is part historical account, part management lesson, part how to motivate the troops. It still stands up to being read 30 years after it was written about a now-long dead computer!

Buy it and enjoy the read.

p.s. It inspired me to install Colossal Cave Adventure which they used to debug The Eagle on my Raspberry Pi.

3 people found this helpful

R N McConnachie

Nostalgia, Exciting and Well Written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a really old book but I still found it fascinating.
I used to work in computer manufacturing in the 1980's and a lot of this resonated with me, although not on the same scale.
The book was well researched and well written.
It might have a relatively narrow readership but if it is in your field of interest you should enjoy it.

4 people found this helpful

Paul

Timeless

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 13, 2012

Verified Purchase

As one of the other reviewers commented, this book really is timeless.

I was given a copy when I started in the IT industry in the early 90s, fresh out of University. The events described by the author at Data General were then only about a decade old and although I enjoyed the book, I couldn't really relate to most of the people as I hadn't met their equivalents yet!

However, with 20 years of software development and management under my belt, I have now had the pleasure of working with the Ed de Castros, the Tom Wests, plus many of the "Hardy Boys" and "Microkids".

Reading the book again, I noted that the efforts, achievements and tantrums are as integral to large scale software development products today as they were over thirty years ago when West's team were developing Project Eagle.

One person found this helpful

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