This review was originally printed in the 2016 edition of the UKUUG newsletter, which is now defunct.
Authors: Tom Lean
Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma
IBSN: 978-1472918338
Pages: 288
Price: £15.00
Published: February 2016
Disclosure: I was at university with the author of Electronic Dreams – though I still had to pay full price for my copy of the book!
Most of the books reviewed for the newsletter are hot off the press and relate to the latest tools and languages, such as C11, ES6, Swift etc. Occasionally though it’s fun to take a trip down memory lane and reminisce about the ‘good old days’ — in this case 1980s computing.
The first thing I noticed about this book is that Tom has done his research, no doubt assisted by his current project involving conducting interviews with figures from science and technology, including Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson. Many of the interviewees are refreshingly frank about topics such as the (un)reliability of the computers and the ‘flying by the seat of our pants’ method of running a computer-related business in the 1980s. My favourite anecdote though is the one where Furber and Wilson are separately told that the other has said it would be possible to have a prototype ready by the end of the week, as a way of spurring them on.
Even though I have read widely about the period in question, there were still some new facts and titbits to enjoy. For example, I’d somehow managed to miss Prestel, the Post Office system which could be seen as an early version of the World Wide Web. Also, whilst the information on the Acorn, Spectrum and Commodore machines didn’t cover anything new to me, the Oric computer was something which I hadn’t heard of before.
After reading this book I had mixed feelings about the subject matter — pride that Britain was a pioneer in the field of computing, and disappointment that we failed to follow up on early successes and instead left it to the United States to lead the world. Even where we have succeeded, it’s often ‘behind the scenes’ and uncredited (e.g. both the iPhone and iPad use hardware designed by UK companies ARM and Imagination Technologies). Hopefully this book will go some way to spreading the word about historical British contribution to computing, and perhaps even spur on the next generation.
If you have any interest in the history of computing, this book is well worth reading. Tom has managed to tell an interesting story without resorting to hundreds of footnotes — something which academics writing books aimed at a wider audience sometimes fall down on.