Fire in the Valley, 3rd Edition

Book description

In the 1970s, while their contemporaries were protesting the computer as a tool of dehumanization and oppression, a motley collection of college dropouts, hippies, and electronics fanatics were engaged in something much more subversive. Obsessed with the idea of getting computer power into their own hands, they launched from their garages a hobbyist movement that grew into an industry, and ultimately a social and technological revolution. What they did was invent the personal computer: not just a new device, but a watershed in the relationship between man and machine. This is their story.

Table of contents

  1. Fire in the Valley, Third Edition
    1. Copyright
    2. For the Best Reading Experience...
    3. Table of Contents
    4. Praise for All Editions of Fire in the Valley
    5. Foreword to the Third Edition
    6. Preface to the Third Edition
    7. Acknowledgments
    8. Your Own Computer
    9. Chapter 1: Tinder for the Fire
      1. Steam
      2. The Breakthrough
      3. Critical Mass
      4. Breakout
      5. Hackers
    10. Chapter 2: The Voyage to Altair
      1. Uncle Sol’s Boys
      2. Going for Broke
      3. All Hell Breaks Loose
      4. Putting It Together
      5. The Competition
      6. The Fall
    11. Chapter 3: The Miracle Makers
      1. After Altair
      2. Amateurs and Professionals
      3. Building One and Building Two
      4. Miracles and Mistakes
      5. est and Entrepreneur’s Disease
      6. Death and Rebirth
    12. Chapter 4: Homebrew
      1. Power to the People
      2. The Homebrew Computer Club
      3. Wildfire in Silicon Valley
      4. Nostalgia for the Future
      5. Sixers and Seventy-Sixers
      6. Home Rule
      7. Homebrew Legacy
    13. Chapter 5: The Genie in the Box
      1. The Altair’s First Recital
      2. Pleasure Before Business
      3. The First Operating System
      4. Getting Down to BASIC
      5. The Other BASIC
      6. Electric Pencil
      7. The Rise of General Software Companies
      8. The Bottom Line
      9. Software Empires
    14. Chapter 6: Retailing the Revolution
      1. Spreading the Word: The Magazines
      2. Word of Mouth: The Clubs and Shows
      3. Hand-Holding: The First Retailers
      4. The Big Players
    15. Chapter 7: Apple
      1. Jobs and Woz
      2. Starting Apple
      3. Magic Times
      4. Trouble in Paradise
      5. Shooting for the Moon
    16. Chapter 8: The Gate Comes Down
      1. The Luggable Computer
      2. The HP Way and the Xerox Worm
      3. IBM
    17. Chapter 9: The PC Industry
      1. Losing Their Religion
      2. Clones
      3. Consolidation
      4. Commoditization
      5. Cyberspace
      6. Apple Without Jobs
    18. Chapter 10: The Post-PC Era
      1. The Big Turnaround
      2. Getting Really Personal
      3. Into the Cloud
      4. Leaving the Stage
      5. Looking Back
      6. You May Be Interested In…

Product information

  • Title: Fire in the Valley, 3rd Edition
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: October 2014
  • Publisher(s): Pragmatic Bookshelf
  • ISBN: 9781937785765