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Tracy Kidder

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

by Tracy Kidder (Author)

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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: #93,712 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #42 in Computing Industry History
- #48 in Computer & Technology Biographies
- #118 in History of Engineering & Technology

Customer Reviews:
527 ratings

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Dale E Alleshouse

Thoroughly Entertaining and Amazingly Relevant to Modern Day Engineering!

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

The Soul of a New Machine is a captivating book that chronicles the creation of Data General's Eclipse MV/8000 computer from the engineers' point of view. Through the narrative, Tracy Kidder adeptly illuminates the engineering psyche: the rush derived from the freedom to create, the sensation of being "lost in the machine", the feeling of power that comes from bringing order to chaos, the personal identity associated with creation. The book elucidates the paradoxical competing motivations that inspire an employee to maintain a daunting schedule that eclipses their personal life. Tracy may understand engineers better than they understand themselves. In fact, as an engineer, I understand myself better after reading this book.

Being set in the late 1970s, the book provides the reader with an authentic glimpse into a bygone era when yellow legal pads and pencils were essential engineering tools. What's surprising is the similarities to modern-day. Engineers are still wrestling with the same fundamental questions: can machines think, what are the ethical implications of computing, what's the perfect balance between done and right? Then and now, engineers are attempting to cope with the "long-term tiredness" resulting from the rampant pace of innovation that can render a recent graduate more skilled than an industry veteran. The human component remains the most perplexing. In the end, "people are just reaching out in the dark, touching hands." The book serves as a refreshing reminder that although technology evolves at a breakneck pace, the design process remains much the same.

In conclusion, The Soul of a New Machine should be required reading for business and engineering students alike. The enduring lessons are to hire smart people, enable them, and get out of their way. Engineers thrive on agency and the potential to materialize their conceptions. No amount of external motivation can breathe commiserate vitality into a design process. If you are an engineer or a manager, do yourself a favor: read and understand The Soul of a New Machine.

11 people found this helpful

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Scott J Pearson

A Tale of Technology and the Engineers which Drive its Innovation

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2020

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This work, written about four decades ago, tells the true tale of how a team of computer engineers built a new computer. In an era contemporaneous to Apple Computer’s founding, Data General computers built affordable new computers for the masses. A group of engineers built a new circuit board that eventually pushed itself to the forefront of the market.

This book is about engineers and the culture of engineering more than anything else. It’s about smart young men who pour their lives into projects in order to see them succeed. It’s about their lack of social skill, their strange coping mechanisms, and their bonds of brotherhood and friendship. Such displays are familiar to anyone who has spent much time around engineers. In Kidder’s telling, these engineers give this product supreme meaning for a couple years of their life.

Kidder’s journalistic act won a Pulitzer Prize. It’s amazing how he transforms mundane engineering practices into a fast-paced drama. His ability to empathize with average engineers (especially as a non-engineer) confounds me. He describes this scene as exciting for the masses when most non-engineers would consider such adventures as boring. This work still interesting to read almost forty years later.

So what is the soul of a computer? To Kidder, it’s about working hard on a project to which one has given supreme importance. It’s about a team coming together despite their social hang-ups. It’s about pushing a product out only to have marketers and business-people claim its inventive force as their own. It’s about not just the circuit boards and software but the people who create the computer for us.

2 people found this helpful

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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.

57 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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.

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

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.

2 people found this helpful

Bobbert

Still as great a story as when I originally read it 20 years ago!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

Still as great a story as when I originally read it 20 years ago!! Well worth a read even if you're not interested in computers

One person found this helpful

Kindle Customer

A brilliant read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2019

Verified Purchase

I read this book when it came out, many years ago, and enjoyed it enormously. I found it just as hard to put down this time, and recommend it to anyone with an interest in the development of computers or the management of very bright people.

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