I got inspired to read it after seeing The Bit Player - a film that I described in a posting to this list on Aug. 3, 2019. I have now seen it a second time at the Ashland, Oregon Independent Film Festival which was online this year. After the screening, the 2 authors and the filmmaker were part of an online interactive chat that was partly similar to the live discussion following the screening a year ago. It was great to see the film both before and after reading the book. A good friend (Alex Magoun) who is on the IEEE History Committee is credited in the Acknowledgments section with helping the book editing process "immeasurably."
I also thoroughly enjoyed Leslie Berlin's Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age which profiles 7 key people. It bounces around re: their contributions as time progresses in the book from the 1970s until the early 1980s. Like the Robert Noyce bio by her noted earlier in this thread, it was well researched and fun to read. I was delighted when an event that I organized about the history of Atari was attended by her and included in a couple of the book's entries about Al Alcorn. Two of the seven who are profiled are women: Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public, and that company (ASK Group) was the first to truly productize software; and Fawn Alvarez, who rose from the ROLM factory line to its executive suite.
BTW, a good resource for finding old books like these is abebooks.com - I just ordered a copy of the Vannevar Bush book discussed earlier in this thread.
BTW, a good resource for finding old books like these is abebooks.com - I just ordered a copy of the Vannevar Bush book discussed earlier in this thread.
Also, here is what I posted to this list last year after seeing the Claude Shannon film for the first time:
I saw a screening last night of The Bit Player at the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mtn. View, CA USA. It was quite an impressive film. Interviews with Shannon, including an extensive one in the early 1980s at his home, formed the basis of much of the film by way of a key one being reproduced using actors. John Hutton played Shannon - he has extensive acting chops on stage (including as King Lear; some info here) and on film (various, including a small part in Spielberg's Lincoln as Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner). It was a brilliant way to tell Shannon's story as it portrayed his in-person eccentricities - and there is no significant actual footage of this aspect of Shannon. This was accompanied by interesting animations and discussion of his seminal paper and famous Master's thesis in order to convey the gravity of his importance, along with portions of the 1952 “Theseus” Maze-Solving Mouse film. The film was concluded with just-discovered brief footage of Shannon juggling on a unicycle - that was fantastic to see!
More info, presented in an excellent and sophisticated fashion, is at www.TheBitPlayer.com The panel who discussed the film after the screening (including Writer/Producer/Director Mark Levinson) noted that there would be a screening of the film in San Francisco in September. I do not know where else it will be shown in the future. The website shows the CHM screening as the film's third. It's the quality of film that I could easily and eagerly watch a second time even as soon as next month. Do study the website as it is brilliantly executed.
This was the first documentary film funded by the IEEE Foundation, and it was done in conjunction with the IEEE Information Theory Society (ITS). BTW, the ITS is the only IEEE society whose "basis" has a definitive starting date - the 1948 publication of Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication.
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Brian A. Berg / bberg@StanfordAlumni.org
Berg Software Design - LinkedIn Profile
14500 Big Basin Way, Suite F, Saratoga, CA 95070 USA
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Brian A. Berg / bberg@StanfordAlumni.org
Berg Software Design - LinkedIn Profile
14500 Big Basin Way, Suite F, Saratoga, CA 95070 USA
Voice: 408.741.5010 / Cell: 408.568.2505
Consulting: Flash Memory/USB/Storage/Patents
visit the Storage Cornucopia: www.bswd.com
FMS Technical Chair: www.FlashMemorySummit.com
IEEE Milestone Coordinator & History Chair for Region 6
IEEE SCV Section Past Chair / IEEE-CNSV Board Director