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

by Tracy Kidder (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,507 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
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Back Bay Books
  4. Publication date
    June 1, 2000
  5. Dimensions
    5.55 x 1.1 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0316491977
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0316491976
  8. See all details
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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 ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.55 x 1.1 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,507 ratings

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  1. Tracy Kidder

    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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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
1,507 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Dale E Alleshouse
5.0 out of 5 stars 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.
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LA in Dallas
4.0 out of 5 stars An act of creation
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2023
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There are certain stories our world deems interesting to tell and to hear: stories of battle, stories about artists, stories about show business, stories about politics, stories about crime, and of course love stories. An author would have to be crazy to dedicate himself to the proposition that there is an engrossing story to be told about about building a house, or designing a digital computer.

Tracy Kidder is that author. His book House tells about the building of an ordinary family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. This book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells the story of the design of a digital computer at the minicomputer company Data General in the 1970s.

Before the 1970s a computer was a huge, honking machine, so expensive that an organization that needed to do computing, such as a university, would own exactly one mainframe computer, probably an IBM (AKA "the Evil Empire"), and use it for all campus computing. In the 1970s a new kind of computer came to be. These were called minicomputers, but they were only "mini" in comparison to an IBM mainframe. The most successful minicomputer company was Digital Equipment Corporation, known to its users as "DEC" (pronounced like "deck") . The company didn't like this and insisted that we call them "Digital", but "DEC" -- one syllable, "Digital", three -- it was a fight they were never gonna win.

Three engineers who left DEC started a new minicomputer company called Data General. They had some initial success with the Data General Nova, a minicomputer designed to undercut the DEC PDP-8. (PDP stood for "Programmable "Data Processor" -- that name was chosen to conceal the truth that the PDP machines were computers from university computer centers, who didn't want anyone but themselves doing computing on campus.) But by the mid-1970s DG minis were running a distant second to DEC's own improved product, the PDP-11, which dominated the minicomputer market. The PDP 11/20 I spent my undergrad years programming occupied two standard electronic racks, each a little bit bigger than an ordinary kitchen refrigerator, and stored data on removable magnetic disks with a capacity of 1 MB, each the size of a large serving platter. The computer had 48 kB of memory. As an undergrad I exercised much of my ingenuity in squeezing my programs and data into those 48 kB. The PDP-11/20 cost about $20,000 -- this at a time when $5,000 was a lot to pay for a new car.

The PDP-11 had a serious limitation -- it was a 16-bit machine. That meant that the largest chunk of memory you could deal with was 65536 bytes (= 2 multiplied by itself 16 times). The 16-bit limitation was built into the PDP-11 architecture in a pretty fundamental way. It was obvious to everyone that the Next Big Thing in minicomputers would be 32-bit minicomputers, which would be able to address 4 GB of memory (an amount that seemed almost infinite at the time). DEC set out to design a new 32-bit minicomputer that would be as much like the PDP-11 as possible -- this was eventually their VAX minicomputer line.

Data General knew that the VAX was coming onto the market. In order to survive, they would need to come up with a competitive 32-bit minicomputer. And they would have to do it fast, before DEC owned the market. The Soul of a New Machine is the story of that effort, led by Tom West. It is a genuinely exciting story, not just because it is well told by Kidder, but also because it was a high-stakes effort under the most severe sort of pressure. West hired a bunch of young still-wet-behind-the-ears engineers who had no experience with a project this complex. He pioneered "Move fast and break stuff." long before Mark Zuckerberg ever said that. For instance, he told his team "Not everything worth doing is worth doing well," or "If you can do a quick-and-dirty job and it works, do it."

In the short run, the project was a success. DG brought the Eclipse MV/8000 to market. In the long run, though, it was a failure. VAXen came to dominate the minicomputer market, and DG eventually was forced out of the minicomputer business. But, to be clear, The Soul of a New Machine is not a business story. It's an engineering story. If you don't believe that an engineering story can be exciting, maybe you should give it a try.
10 people found this helpful
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John S. Robinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Read on Technolgy Development
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2024
Verified Purchase
This book is a study in both the process of development of evolving technology. It also is an example of what may be the best management technique for managing young, high-tech development groups. If I were teaching a graduate course in management, I would use this book as required reading and as the basis for discussion on how to best manage, groups of young, high-tech employees.
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Guillermo Qro
5.0 out of 5 stars La impresión y pastas son excelentes
Reviewed in Mexico on April 2, 2024
Verified Purchase
Llegó muy rápido, 3 días antes . Tengo, de hace años la versión en español la encontré en un tienda de libros usados (pero estaba nuevo). Habían muchos, como en calidad de desecho. Y por mucho tiempo estuve buscando la versión original. La compré a muy buen precio.
La calidad de impresion y pasta es excelentes.
En cuanto a contenido es apasionante (si eres electrónico) el leer como trabajaron en el diseño de una computadora de los años 70s.
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Guillermo Qro
5.0 out of 5 stars La impresión y pastas son excelentes
Reviewed in Mexico on April 2, 2024
Llegó muy rápido, 3 días antes . Tengo, de hace años la versión en español la encontré en un tienda de libros usados (pero estaba nuevo). Habían muchos, como en calidad de desecho. Y por mucho tiempo estuve buscando la versión original. La compré a muy buen precio.
La calidad de impresion y pasta es excelentes.
En cuanto a contenido es apasionante (si eres electrónico) el leer como trabajaron en el diseño de una computadora de los años 70s.
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Tiago
1.0 out of 5 stars The book arrived damaged.
Reviewed in Poland on February 24, 2022
Verified Purchase
The book arrived damaged. See attached photo.
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Tiago
1.0 out of 5 stars The book arrived damaged.
Reviewed in Poland on February 24, 2022
The book arrived damaged. See attached photo.
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andrew
5.0 out of 5 stars Create a vision, have people sign on, let them off the leash and make sure they know who feeds them
Reviewed in Canada on August 15, 2019
Verified Purchase
Tension, adversity, competition, appreciation, resource allocation and passion, all occasioned in timely measures to achieve an individual and collective rewarding end, will accomplish the seemingly impossible. This book is as much about management and team cohesion as it is about product vision, development and market penetration. The articulation and structuring of objectives and the leadership principles to guide innovation to a market leading product, are timeless. Tracy Kidder has excelled at describing the inner workings of an emerging, successful high tech company and the diversity of people who labour passionately and assiduously to bring their efforts to fruition.
2 people found this helpful
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NaCho
5.0 out of 5 stars Gran libro
Reviewed in Spain on April 15, 2020
Verified Purchase
Es un gran libro, muy recomendable para un amplio espectro de lectores, pero sobre todo a los que sienten pasión por la tecnología.
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SREEKESH S
5.0 out of 5 stars this is a good read. It actually explains how complicated projects were ...
Reviewed in India on May 29, 2017
Verified Purchase
If you are working in IT industry or a startup, this is a good read. It actually explains how complicated projects were managed in DEC back in 70's. Author explains some computer architecture concepts in a simple manner. End of the book I realised thay managers still use the same techniques with their employees even in these days
2 people found this helpful
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