Reviews

organic life, based on the translation of sequences (nucleo- tides) into structures (proteins), with natural selection the mechanism for debugging the source code, and translating improvements back from the structure of the organism to the sequence of its genes (p. 216).

Machines have achieved control over the structural elements, but not the sequential ones. Dyson cites mathematics as evidence of the former and computer music as evidence of the latter.

Another hypothesis: Stored motor-control sequences may have led to increasing levels of abstraction in human brains (p. 224). Conclusion: Computer software developed hierarchically in the same way. But who or what is doing the storing in this latter case? In the development of the human species, we can easily accept that structure of the organism came first and sequence as an aid came second. Moreover, we can accept that the storage process of these sequences was accomplished in the structure by the stmc- ture. But when we apply this set of acceptances to nonliving things, how does the process of development proceed? Maybe this is another version of the Garden of Eden story, where the com- puter scientist is instilling the initial capacity into the new com- puter, “Adam and Eve,” and eventually the computer will operate independently of its initiator. I will entertain the possibility, but I think Dyson will consider this analogy derogatory. Indeed, it is the opposite of his entire claim. For Dyson, “digital coding has come of age, living its own lives [sic] according to its own laws” (p. 224). What is limiting this development, according to Dyson, is the machine’s use of languages that are more compatible with human information processing than that of the machine. In other words, if we cannot hear the speaking of the machine, it is up to us to try to bridge the gap, it is not up to the machine. This is like saying the dolphin has to leam my language if it wants to communicate with me, assuming of course that the dolphin is inferior to me in capa- bility, which is the same as the analogy he uses for the relation between person and machine. There are many difficult assump- tions in the argument of this book. But grappling with them is enlightening, even if, after reading the book, any conclusions about the status and future of intelligent machines still elude us.

Arthur L. Norberg Professor: Program in History of Science and Technology Department of Computer Science, 4-1 92 EE/CS Building Universit?, of Minnesota Minneapolis, M N 55455 e-mail: norberg@cs. urnn.edu

0 Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997, ISBN 0-393-04124-7, $27.50, 352 pp.

Crystal Fire is a well-informed and gracefully written history of the invention of the transistor. This is, of course, a story that has been told often and in some detail over the last 50 years, as befits one of the tiny handful of truly epochal inventions of our century. So what is to attract the reader to this latest version?

The authority of its authors is perhaps the first thing to be rec- ommended. Lillian Hoddeson is the world’s premier historian of solid-state physics, having embarked on an extensive program of interviews and archival research more than two decades ago, when the full significance of the solid-state revolution was just

unfolding. Her coauthor, Michael Riordan, is a physicist who has earned a reputation as one of the best writers in his field. The combination is nearly ideal for the production of a work that dis- tinguishes itself for both a sure handling of technical material and a popular, approachable style that both specialists and lay readers will feel comfortable reading.

The other distinguishing feature of this work is its sure han- dling of the central personalities of this story. From the opening anecdotal image of William Shockley driving his MG convertible to Bell Labs on a late December morning in 1947 to brief charac- terizations of the key makers of Silicon Valley’s microelectronics industry, Crystal Fire sets out to get inside the heads of these sci- entists and engineers who reshaped the modern technological order, and it largely succeeds. The central conflict of what is, in some ways, a modern technological morality tale is the conflict among Shockley and his quieter Bell Labs associates, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen. The tensions among very differing ambitions, personal styles, and intellectual proclivities come across as a central dynamic element in giving the transistor’s in- vention and development its final form. Riordan and Hoddeson’s success in conveying this story is remarkable, particularly in light of an overwhelming sense of institutional order and mission that Bell Labs-itself a player in this story-tends to impose on the tale and its consequences.

If this success is marred, it is by the authors’ lack of confidence in the compelling nature of their story. Rather than allowing the personalities to do battle on a clear stage, they are required to compete throughout the book with metaphorical tricks and flour- ishes that detract, rather than add to the drama. The first clue to this problem appears in the book’s title and subtitle; tellingly, the word transistor or solid-state or electronics never appears. We are instead asked to see this story as “the birth of the information age.” Maybe, but not necessarily. The authors, and the readers of this journal, know very well that “the information age” is a com- plex phenomenon, with many sources and manifestations. The transistor and the panoply of solid-state devices that followed (and that are briefly chronicled here) are key underpinnings of modem information technologies, but they are neither the first elements nor necessarily the most indispensable ones. The authors’ pen- chant for metaphorical flight continues throughout the work, but most readers will be able to shrug off this annoyance and still appreciate the best single history yet written of a great invention.

Prof. Robert Friedel History Department 3122 Francis Scott Key University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742-7315 e-mail: rJz 7@umail. umd.edu

0 Eldon C. Hall, Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer, Reston, Va.: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1996. xxv + 196 pp, ISBN 1-56347-1 85-X, $54.95. Available from the AIAA; 1801 Alexan- der Bell Dr., Reston, VA 20191-4344; or from the AIAA Web site at http://www.aiaa.org/.

This book is an insider’s view of the design and construction of the onboard computers that guided men to the Moon and back in

78 IEEE Annals of the History ofComputing, Vol. 21, No. 1 , 1999

the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Eldon Hall was one of the key members of the team that made those journeys possible, working at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory under the direction of Charles Stark (“Doc”) Draper. We need to be reminded, as the author does in this book, that the early 1960s was a time of main- frame computing, exemplified by the IBM 7090. Computers were physically large. Their architecture favored long word lengths and inputloutput routed through channels. Programming was by punched cards, in batch mode. Meanwhile, missile and aircraft guidance systems of that time were mainly analog. All that had to change, and change it did, with Apollo.

The Apollo guidance computers were compact, digital, and ca- pable of interactive operation in real time. What was more, they used a new type of circuit that had neither been proven nor ac- cepted by computer engineers: the integrated circuit. Hall is a modest and self-effacing man, but he makes it clear that the de- sign decisions that seem so obviously right, in hindsight, were tough to make when he made them and that it took a lot of sales- manship to convince others that his decisions were correct.

This book is an insider’s technical history. It is lavishly illus- trated with color and black-and-white engineering photos, and it contains numerous copies of graphs and other technical data that lay behind the development of the computers. It is not a popular history intended for a general audience. However, 1 found the book readable and most enjoyable, and most readers of the Annals should have no trouble following the author’s narrative. 1 highly recommend it.

Paul Ceruzzi National Air and Space Museum Smithsonian Institution Washington, DC 20560-0311 e-mail: Paul-Ceruzzi@nasm.si. edu

[Biographical note: Paul Ceruzzi is Curator of Aerospace Elec- tronics and Computing at the National Air and Space Museum. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history oj computing, including Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Com- puter Age (1989) and A History of Modem Computing (1998).]

Briefly Noted 0 Stephen Johnston, “Making the Arithmometer Count,” Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 1997, vol. 52, pp. 12-21. An account of the changing forms taken by the first commercially manufactured calculating machine, with particular emphasis on its use in Great Britain.

0 France Telecom publishes the joumal Les Cahiers TilPcom- munications Histoire et SociitP. Issue no. 4, the second for 1996, includes the following articles:

Pascal Griset, “Des chiffres et des lettres: numerotation et developpement du tCICphone,” pp. 6-29. An account of the development of telephone numbers in France, from the networks of the 1880s on which callers announced the name of the person to whom they wished to speak to an operator who made the connection, to the eight-digit num- bers and automated systems of 1985. Peppino Ortoleva et Paola Pallavincini, “Une sociCtC en

reseau: mode d’emploi L‘annuaire ttlephonique et le client en Italie,” pp. 30-61. An account of the history of tele- phone networks and telephone books in Italy from about 1910 until 1990. Yves Lecouturier, “Tourisme et telephone: 1880-1914, l’exemple normand,” pp. 63-8 1. An account of the growth of telephone networks in one region of France, as busi- nesses catering to tourists sought to ease visitors’ commu- nication with Paris and other cities.

0 Peter Galison, “Computer simulations and the Trading Zone,” The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power, Peter Galison and David J. Stump, eds., Stanford, Calif.: Stan- ford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8047-2436 (hardback) and 0-8047-2562-4 (paperback), pp. 118-157, $24.95 (paperback).

In the years immediately following World War 11, John von Neu- mann, Stanislaw Ulam, and others developed Monte Carlo meth- ods to simulate on electronic computers the events that could not be observed directly in the laboratory or predicted from exact solutions to differential equations. Peter Galison examines the early application of these methods to problems ranging from the design of thermonuclear weapons to weather prediction. He ar- gues that the new statistical techniques transcended traditional disciplinary separations, challenged the usual distinctions between experimental and theoretical research, and led some to new argu- ments about the metaphysical basis of physical theories.

0 Kathy B. Hamrick, “The History of the Hand-Held Electronic Calculator,” American Mathematical Monthly, 1996, vol. 103, pp. 633-639. An illustrated account of the development of the prototype Caltech calculator at Texas Instruments and the result- ing Canon product: the Pocketronic.

0 Heather Menzies, Whose Brave New World? The Information Highway and the New Economy, Toronto: Between the Lines Publishing, 1996, 192 pp, ISBN 1-896357-02-4, $19.98. Menzies’s discussion of the manner in which recent technical and economic changes have transformed the lives of ordinary Canadians raises intriguing questions for historians concerned about the role of computing and related technologies in the lives of individuals.

IEEE Annals of the Histoq of Computing, Vol. 2 1, No. 1 , 1999 79