That's interesting stuff, I've heard of those fairs, Britain used to have them too but I think they are a thing of the past. Speaking of old radios, I lived in Wilmington DE for a few years after meeting my now wife. It was a lovely leafy old district, great old antique stores and stuff. I once stumbled upon a tiny store that had several old radios, I bought three but this is the most interesting one:

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Truly a classic, the old six transistor radio. Yep, all made in Japan.

Ron

 

Here is a good follow on for "Crystal Fire". Goes from the transistor into development of the integrated circuit chips. No longer a single transitor but billions of them integrated into circuits on a single monolithic chip.

 

Here is a good follow on for "Crystal Fire". Goes from the transistor into development of the integrated circuit chips. No longer a single transitor but billions of them integrated into circuits on a single monolithic chip.
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An excellent, gripping book, I read it a few years ago when I was alone for a long weekend, it was almost unputdownable!

 

Another superb read from 1981, not entirely electronics but certainly falls within the scope of the term.



The Soul of a New Machine

 

I was deeply into programming and teaching asm programming on DG NOVA 2 minicomputers when The Soul Of A New Machine was first published.

 

I was deeply into programming and teaching asm programming on DG NOVA 2 minicomputers when The Soul Of A New Machine was first published.

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That's interesting, I take my hat off to you! I just found this:

https://hackaday.com/2024/02/05/arctic-adventures-with-a-data-general-nova-ii-the-equipment/

 

As a grad student and later on a research technician I serviced all of our departments PDP-8S, PDP-15, Nova 2-4, Nova 2-10, Nova 3. I replaced a lot of crashed heads and bad platters on our massive 5MB hard disc drives. I knew all those machines inside out.

I wrote a CAD PCB layout program on a Nova 2, 16KB memory all in ASM, with interactive graphics and a mouse pad. I was inspired to do this by a presentation given by Adele Goldberg from Xerox PARC on Smalltalk.

 

I wrote a CAD PCB layout program on a Nova 2, 16KB memory all in ASM, with interactive graphics and a mouse pad. I was inspired to do this by a presentation given by Adele Goldberg from Xerox PARC on Smalltalk.

That sounds like a hell of an achievement, ahead of its time possibly...

 

I've never read Fire in the valley - but should add this to my list.

 

There is a newer 3rd edition of "Fire in the Valley" that goes up into the 2000's. Published 2014. Sort of a continuation from the original edition in 1984. Haven't read it yet, on my reading list though.

 

Also What the Doormouse said, I have this, started reading it years ago but never finished. @MrChips you might find this interesting, Parc comes up a lot in this book.

Markoff argues for a direct connection between the counterculture of the late 1950s and 1960s (using examples such as Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, California) and the development of the computer industry. The book also discusses the early split between the idea of commercial and free-supply computing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

 

Here is one that ranges somewhere in the realm of Monty Pythonesque to Far Side. A real cult classic and very amusing read! Larry has several others in various math and science topics but not in electronics sadly.
At 251 pages long it is more book than just comic book. It can be found in PDF for free if you look for it.