It’s a fine tale of a product development project that unfolds in secrecy, in a mild paranoia born of corporate competition.
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d
Or wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre
Instead copy’d some things already made
And squander’d thus their own creative fire
—Gray/Mecredy
[The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (July 1981: Little, Brown and Company).]
This Pulitzer-winning 1981 book is a delightful account of the development of an electronic product by a design team in the late seventies, at a now-defunct company called Data General. It’s a fine tale of a product development project that unfolds in secrecy, haste, and a kind of mild paranoia born of corporate competition.
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