Who are the masterminds of today's electronic revolution and what motivated them? That's the question Time correspondent Robert Slater asked as he traveled to Silicon Valley to interview the designers, entrepreneurs, hardware engineers, and software writers who have given us the modern computer.Robert Slater is a member of the reporting staff of the Time Jerusalem bureau.

About the Author

Robert Slater is a member of the reporting staff of the Time Jerusalem bureau.

Prizes

"The book contains clearly written thumbnail sketches of 31 people who were of paramount importance in the conception and creation of the computer industry... Slater's portraits always manage to be interesting and occasionally riveting. There are 10- to 15-page portraits of the early workers, such as Babbage, Turing, and von Neumann... Also included are silicon chip inventors such as Jack Kilby, mainframe designers Gene Amdahl and Seymour Cray, and software specialists Grace Hopper (COBOL), John Backus (FORTRAN), Kemeny and Kurtz (BASIC), and Richie and Thompson (UNIX)... [Slater's] breezy journalistic style reveals the personal side of these computer industry pioneers." Science Books & Films

Reviews

Slater, a Time correspondent based in Jerusalem, has written sketches of 34 key individuals in the electronics revolution. They range from Babbage and Turing to Richie and Thompson (UNIX), Jobs (Apple), and Knuth ( The Art of Computer Programming ). Many of these figures have been similarly dealt with elsewhere (e.g., David Richie's The Computer Pioneers, LJ 2/15/86). However, Slater does include a number of individuals overlooked by others: Jay Forrester of IBM, H. Ross Perot of EDS, and others. The sketches, well written and thoughtful, provide a good overview of the evolution and development of the computer field. Hilary Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab., Livermore, Cal.

"The book contains clearly written thumbnail sketches of 31 people who were of paramount importance in the conception and creation of the computer industry... Slater's portraits always manage to be interesting and occasionally riveting. There are 10- to 15-page portraits of the early workers, such as Babbage, Turing, and von Neumann... Also included are silicon chip inventors such as Jack Kilby, mainframe designers Gene Amdahl and Seymour Cray, and software specialists Grace Hopper (COBOL), John Backus (FORTRAN), Kemeny and Kurtz (BASIC), and Richie and Thompson (UNIX)... [Slater's] breezy journalistic style reveals the personal side of these computer industry pioneers." Science Books & Films