overview four ages prehistory bodies scientists digerati prophets IBM 5 Sisters Apple Microsoft other Software dot com heroes

the 5 sisters Writing about the information economy (and the computing industry) is often characterised in terms of Babbage, IBM versus Apple, Microsoft versus the world ... Reality's both more complicated and more interesting. This page highlights what wits have described as the five sisters or the seven dwarfs: the 'other' computing companies. Paul Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge, MIT Press 98) offers an authoritative overview of technology and the industry.  We're more impressed by James Cortada's exemplary Before The Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs & Remington Rand & the Industry They Created 1865-1956 (Princeton, Princeton Uni Press 00) and his The Computer in the United States: From Laboratory to Market, 1930-60 (Armonk, Sharpe 93). Michael Riordan & Lillian Hoddeson's Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor & the Birth of the Information Age (New York, Norton 97), Kenneth Flamm's Creating The Computer: Government, Industry & High Technology (Washington, Brookings Institution 88) and The First Computers: History & Architectures (Cambridge, MIT Press 00) edited by Raul Rojas & Ulf Hashagen are useful background material.      HP David Packard, one of the grand-daddies of Silicon Alley, described his partnership with William Hewlett in The hp Way: How Bill Hewlett & I built our company (New York, Harper 96).      Control Data, Data General and General Electric David Lundstrom's A Few Good Men From Univac (Cambridge, MIT Press 87) is an academic history. Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine (London, Penguin 84) is the most lasting memento of DG. Homer Oldfield's King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric's Ambiguous Challenge to the Computer Industry (Los Alamitos, IEEE Computer Society Press 96) is the major study of the failure of GE, Phillips, Siemens and other consumer giants to achieve success as computing hardware/software manufacturers.       ICL ICL: A Business & Technical History (Oxford, Clarendon Press 89) by Martin Campbell-Kelly is the definitive history of the UK company. There's a more panoramic view in John Hendry's Innovating for Failure: Government Policy & the Early British Computer Industry (Cambridge, MIT Press 90).      pentium inside Tim Jackson's Inside Intel: Andy Grove & the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Chip Company (New York, Dutton 97) is an intelligent study by Financial Times journalist Tim Jackson. It's of particular value for its discussion of the relationship between the chip maker, Microsoft and the IBM clones.      Dell and Cray Business the Dell Way: 10 Secrets of the World's Best Computer Business (Oxford, Capstone 99) by Rebecca Saunders - whose recent Amazon.com book is panned below - is tedious, simplistic and otherwise disappointing. For insights turn to the New York Times or other quality journalism. Michael Dell's self-serving Direct From Dell (New York, Harper Business 99) is more substantial. Charles Murray's The Superman: The story of Seymour Cray & the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer (New York, Wiley  97) is overly positive. There's a more sober account in Knowing Machines: Essays On Technological Change (Cambridge, MIT Press 98) by Donald MacKenzie.      Cisco We await David Bunnell's Making the Cisco Connection: The Story Behind the Real Internet Superpower (New York, Wiley 00) and Business the Cisco Way: Secrets of the Company which makes the Internet (Oxford, Capstone 00) by David Stauffer.    next page  (Apple)