tracy kidder's the soul of a new machine

Then West closed the door and walked back across the room to the computer, which was now all but fully assembled. West stood around and watched him work, and in a little while the technician packed up his tools and left. If the technician had asked West to identify himself, West wouldn't have lied and he wouldn't have answered the question, either. A technician, still installing the machine, West figured.Īlthough West's designs weren't illegal, they were sly, and he had no intention of embarrassing the friend who had told him he could visit this room. Along the far wall, at the end of the trench, enclosed in three large, cream-colored steel cabinets, stood a VAX 11/780, the most important of a new class of computers called '32-bit superminis.' To West's surprise, one of the cabinets was open and a man with tools was standing in front of it. The floor was torn up a shallow trench filled with fat power cables traversed it. One holiday morning in 1978, Tom West traveled to a city that was situated, he would later say guardedly, 'somewhere in America.' He entered a building as though he belonged there, strolled down a hallway, and let himself quietly into a windowless room. The Atlantic published two lengthy excerpts of the book back in 1981 - Flying Upside Down and The Ultimate Toy - but if those catch your fancy at all, I'd recommend skipping them and just read the book. Kidder won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for this book.

The story follows an engineering team at Data General as they attempt to design and build an entirely new minicomputer in the late 1970s. Inspired by Halt and Catch Fire, I'm re-reading Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine.

Tracy kidder's the soul of a new machine