IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: 

#1 In 1960, two young California engineers boarded a plane to attend an electronics technical meeting in Philadelphia. The International Circuits Conference had recently been focused on radio, but that was changing as electronic systems began to find their way into consumer, business, and military equipment.

#2 Crane was hired to work on a new computer being built by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was witness to one of the world's first artificial light shows when he worked on the Johniac, a computer that used magnetic-core memory.

#3 In 1960, Douglas Engelbart was working with SRI on a magnetic shift register, one of the key components of a computer. He had introduced the idea of an all-magnetic computer at an industry technical conference the previous year. He was not an easy person to control, but he was a valuable member of the team.

#4 Engelbart was a navy radar technician who was stationed in the Philippines after World War II. He was bored and anxious, and spent his time watching the towering tropical cloud formations. He began to consider how the fields of science and engineering could be applied to the deluge of data threatening to overwhelm researchers.

Summary of John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said

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