Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Anthony Chandor
Platform:

Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can't Get a Date

Amazon.co.uk Review
Robert X. Cringely manages to capture the contradictions and everyday insanity of computer industry empire building, while at the same time chipping away sardonically at the PR campaigns that have built up some very common business people into the household gods of geekdom. Despite some chuckles at the expense of all things nerdy, white and male in the computer industry, Cringely somehow manages to balance the humour with a genuine appreciation of both the technical and strategic accomplishments of these industry luminaries. Whether you're a hard-boiled Silicon Valley marketing exec fishing for an IPO or just a plain old reader with an interest in business history and anecdotal storytelling, there's something to enjoy here.

In his new conclusion, Cringely looks at the likely near-future of the PC industry, arguing that most of the major companies are facing a need to dramatically reformulate their mission in the light of engineering developments already in the works. He offers a new paradigm for the development of the industry as it moves from its early "start up" phase into a more mature, more competitive era. --Jake Bond

Product Description
This work looks at the business of computing in the US, as computer science, as a business, and as a collection of extraordinary and eccentric characters. After automobiles, energy production, and illegal drugs, personal computers are one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, and one of the great success stories for American business. This book is linked to a Channel 4 television series entitled "The Triumph of the Nerds".

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Robert X. Cringely
Platform: Silicon Valley

This book is an account, part technical, part sociological and part philosophical, of the computer revolution.

After a general survey of the development of computer-controlled data processing, Michael Rose examines the complex effects of the computer upon the clerical worker - the new opportunities, the dangers of alienation, the threat of technological unemployment. He then focuses upon the fast-developing problems of managers. Many of the standard managerial functions can already be programmed. But should executives delegate qualitative decisions to a machine? And if so, how far can and should these changes go?

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Michael Rose
Platform: Computing

Getting the Most from Your BBC Micro is a comprehensive and carefully designed introduction to your machine. Intended to complement the User Guide supplied with the machine, it contains a large number of hints and tips on programming and the general use of the computer.

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Clive Willamson
Platform: BBC Micro

The complete guide to the greatest thrills, the most fun, the highest scores in the world's most popular computer game - Pac-Man!

Whether you play alone or in competition - you can now come out on top with the strategies revealed in this book!

Publisher: Penguin Books

Platform: Pac-Man

Language English
ISBN-13: 978-0140078145

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Peter Killworth
Platform: BBC Micro

This pop-up book explores various aspects of the personal computer as it was in 1984.

From the blurb:

'This sensational new book teaches you everything you need to know in a fun-filled three dimensional tour through the personal computer.  Open the book and a computer pops out of the page to guide you through the inner workings, from input to output...By the end of your guided tour, you'll literally know the computer inside out.'

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Sharon Gallagher
Platform: Personal Computers

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Thomas Harding
Platform:

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Glyn Moody
Platform: Linux

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Neil Cryer, Pat Cryer
Platform: Acorn Electron

Leon Bagrit was generally recognised as being extraordinarily prescient in his thinking.  For instance, in this book 'The Age of Automation' he predicted:
 
‘It is now possible to envisage personal computers, small enough to be taken around in one’s car, or even one’s pocket.  They could be plugged into a national computer grid, to provide individual enquirers with almost unlimited information.’
 
‘Perhaps the most far-reaching use of the new generation of computers will be in the retention and communication of information of all sorts within a national, possibly a world-wide, information system.
 
‘In many industrial and commercial applications we are moving steadily away from large, centralized computers towards much simpler decentralized units, systems of small, cheap, special-purpose units, rather like building bricks.
 
‘Car drivers could be told immediately about traffic hold-ups and road works and given alternative routes….’

Our copy of this book was kindly donated by Richard Herbert of the Herbert Group in Haverhill, Suffolk. Leon Bagrit worked for Herberts for many years and was responsible for two of the company's patents

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Leon Bagrit
Platform: Automation

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Marlene Teague, Janet Sandy
Platform: BBC Micro

This is a glossary of some 3,000 words, phrases and acronyms used in connection with computers.

Second Edition

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Anthony Chandor with John Graham and Robin Williamson
Platform: Computers

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Bill Gates
Platform: Microsoft

The massively bestselling account of a titanic struggle to dominate a machine...

The making of the 32-bit mini-computer Eagle was a colossus of an enterprise, demanding the waking hours and sleeping thoughts of a brilliant and aggressive team of young computer wizards who worked for the multi-million-dollar American company Data General. They were given one year: day-by-day, wire-by-wire, the 'microkids' traced and retraced Eagle's labyrinthine arteries, fought back at its tantrums and wooed its obedience. It forced them to the limits of their endurance.

Publisher: Penguin Books
Author: Tracy Kidder
Platform: Eagle