The Soul of an Old Machine

"That fellow West is a good man in a storm." … "He didn't sleep for four nights! Four whole nights." And if that trip had been his idea of a vacation, where, the psychologist wanted to know, did he work?

The most famous book written about designing computers features a company - Data General - and a computer - the Eclipse MV/8000 - that both disappeared a long time ago. It’s a testament to that book’s quality that it’s just as fascinating as it was when it was published four decades ago.

What makes Tracy Kidder’s ‘The Soul of a New Machine’ so good?

1. “There’s so goddamn much money to be made.”

“I’m Ed de Castro, president of Data General Corporation. Seven months ago we started the richest small computer company in history. This month we’re announcing our first product: the best small computer in the world … Because if you’re going to make a small inexpensive computer you have to sell a lot of them to make a lot of money. And we intend to make a lot of money.”

Data General Corporation’s first advertisement.

For many years sociologists and others have written of a computer revolution, impending or in progress. Some enthusiasts have declared that the small inexpensive computer inaugurated a new phase of this upheaval, which would make computers instruments of egalitarianism.

Money and upheaval. Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine locates computers firmly where we would place them today. But the geography of Kidder’s 1979 book is not Silicon Valley but thousands of miles away in Massachusetts.

Digital Equipment Corporation had started the ‘minicomputer’ revolution there in 1965. Three years later Ed de Castro, the architect of DEC’s breakout machine, the PDP-8, helped to found Data General (DG).

DG was ambitious and scrappy. One - unpublished - advertisement was an uncouth pre-echo of Apple’s later defiance at IBM’s intrusion into its territory.

They Say IBM’s Entry Into Minicomputers Will Legitimize The Market. The B*****ds Say, Welcome.

DG were the ‘bad guys’ of the minicomputer world, the ‘Darth Vader of the industry’. There were even rumours that they had burned down the factory of a smaller rival.

But there was more to DG than its attitude: there was technical excellence. DG’s first machine, the Nova, was genuinely innovative and soon established itself as a effective competition for DEC’s PDP minicomputer series.

DG took thriftiness to ...