
Ask HN: What's a good history of technology book? - ThomPete
I have read a few tangential books<p>- The Information
- What does technology want
- Robot Mere machine to transcend mind
- Zero<p>and a bunch of other books in the realm, most of them are to some extent philosophical which I really enjoy.<p>But I am looking for a book that takes a more hardcore historical approach and kind of takes us trough
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ArtWomb
Real hardcore, I'd delve into archives of technical publications from Bell
Labs, Berkeley Lab, etc.

[https://commons.lbl.gov/display/itdivision/Berkeley+Lab+Publ...](https://commons.lbl.gov/display/itdivision/Berkeley+Lab+Publications+Management)

[https://archive.org/details/bstj-archives](https://archive.org/details/bstj-
archives)

This report from BBN is a pretty great example of the level of detail and
insider history that can be discovered. I really wish there was more stuff
like this extant.

[http://walden-family.com/bbn/bbn-print2.pdf](http://walden-
family.com/bbn/bbn-print2.pdf)

Youtube is of course an endless treasure trove as well. From The MIT Vault is
a bit of a time machine unto itself. And you can always find the random
Netscape Communicator conference keynote from 1997 with a young Marc
Andreessen. As well as oral histories and product demos like "RAND Corp
presents the Graphics Rocket!" on the Computer History Museum channel ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/user/FromTheVaultofMIT](https://www.youtube.com/user/FromTheVaultofMIT)

[https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerHistory/videos)

On the softcore front. I am thinking of revisiting Daniel Boorstin's
"Knowledge Trilogy". Completely out of vogue in our age of Taleb, Hariri and
Gladwell. Probably chock full of cringe inducing corniness. But I remember
loving the vivid writing style as a kid.

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eugman
Code by Charles Petzold is an in depth history of programming. Very good book.

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arnold_palmur
This is an excellent book that I recommend to many people. It literally goes
from how you would use a flash light to send signals and communicate to the
JVM and everything in between.

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pro_zac
"The Idea Factory" while focused on Bell Labs, gives a pretty broad history of
the birth of digital electronics and the start of everything from digital
encoding of data to cellular networks and satellite communication.

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ebcode
Try "Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery". It goes year-by-year
through each major scientific discovery up until the mid 1980s, when it was
written. Highly enjoyable.

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dasmoth
John D. Clark's "Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants"
is back in print as of a few months ago, and pretty readable overall (but does
venture into some of the less travelled corners of chemistry as well...)

For computer stuff, Tracey Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" is one of my
favourites.

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rchaud
You might be interested in "Losing the Signal", a book about BlackBerry's rise
and fall by Globe & Mail Journalists. It starts with Mike Lazaridis (the main
BB engineer) adventures in repairing electronics in shop class in the '70s, to
developing a lot of the communications technology necessary to launch the BB
push email service.

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iends
The Innovators by Walter Isaacson (early computing history)

Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner (specifically the internet)

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hcrisp
In my "History of Technology" course in college we read, "The Soul of a New
Machine" by Tracy Kidder. More of a journalist's history of how a team built a
new computer.

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ThomPete
Does it go through the history of the things they use to build it with or is
it more a technical account?

~~~
hcrisp
It has both, but more of the personal interest side. A good study of the
culture at Data General and mileu of computing at the time. Kidder did a good
job of explaining it to his audience when computers were still very new. He
won a Pulitzer for it.

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josquindesprez
Conquering the Electron: The Geniuses, Visionaries, Egomaniacs, and Scoundrels
Who Built Our Electronic Age.

It's a history of electronic invention over the past 150 years. Not the best
from a historiographical point of view, but very insightful for getting inside
of the minds of those who developed the technology, and getting a sense of the
tech itself, the mental steps required to invent it, and the personalities of
those involved.

