The Soul of a New Machine is a nonfiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous pressure. The machine was launched in 1980 as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000. The book won the 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction and a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
The book opens with a turf war...
More
The Soul of a New Machine is a nonfiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous pressure. The machine was launched in 1980 as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000. The book won the 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction and a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
The book opens with a turf war between two computer design groups within Data General Corporation, a minicomputer vendor in the 1970s. Most of the senior designers are assigned the "sexy" job of designing the next generation machine, which will be done in North Carolina. Their project (code-named "Fountainhead") is to give Data General a machine to compete with the new VAX computer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which is starting to take over the new 32-bit minicomputer market. The few senior designers who are left in corporate headquarters at Westborough, MA...
Less
