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Subject:The Soul of a New Machine From:Michael Andrew Uhl <uhl -at- VISLAB -dot- EPA -dot- GOV> Date:Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:09:14 -0800
I'd like to publicly thank the people who responsed to my query
about a book I could only barely remember, a well-written
work that involved Data General and a case study of computer
development in a brutally competitive environment.
Arlen Walker (Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- jci -dot- com) provided the most detailed
and accurate response:
A book that touches a little bit on this subject is "The
Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. It's primary
subject is the team that designed the Eagle supermini from
Data General (it was their answer to DEC's VAX line) but it
covers a little bit of the history of DG and DEC as well.
It's an excellent read, BTW.
Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- fs -dot- com -dot- au> wrote (some text omitted):
The book was not so much a history of DG, more a case study
of the buy-em-young-and-burn-em-out approach to high-tech
projects.
It was a pretty good read, as I recall. About the same time
I read a sort of unauthorised biography of IBM, called
'THINK!'. That was a lot of fun.
Denise Dennett (Denise -dot- Dennett -at- gw -dot- pps -dot- com) pointed out that
"The Soul of a New Machine" won a Pulitzer Prize.
Others who sent mew comments include
Chuck Banks (chuck -at- asl -dot- dl -dot- nec -dot- com)
Ray Fernandez (Ray_Fernandez%LDS -at- notes -dot- worldcom -dot- com)
Grant Hogarth" (GRANT -at- onyxgfx -dot- com)
Nicole Jordan (NJORDAN -at- VAX1 -dot- MANKATO -dot- MSUS -dot- EDU)
Mark Merkow (mmerkow -at- ASU -dot- Edu)
Chris Thiessen (christopher -dot- e -dot- thiessen -at- cdev -dot- com)
Paula R Berger (pberger -at- world -dot- std -dot- com)
Krista Van Laan (kvanlaan -at- unda -dot- fi)
Apprently no one who currently works at Data General responded to
my query.
Thank you all.
-Mike
--
Michael Andrew Uhl, Lead Technical Writer (uhl -at- vislab -dot- epa -dot- gov)
Lockheed Martin, Primary Support Contractor to US EPA
National Environmental Supercomputing Center (NESC)
