60th Anniversary of Information Technology brightboys.org
Bright Boys:1938-1958
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Two decades that changed everything.
Everything has a beginning.
None was more profound—and quite unexpected—than Information Technology.
Here for the first time is the untold story of how our new age came to be
and the bright boys who made it happen.

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CAMBRIDGE, MA: In 1946 they should have had better sense than to risk what was left of their youth and careers on what everyone sniggered about as a fool's quest. Wasn't being dragged mercilessly through the Great Depression and then forced to endure the daily terror of World War II enough for one lifetime? Couldn't they just agree with Harry Truman's campaign slogan "We've never had it so good."and enjoy the "so good"?

The bright boys couldn't bring themseleves to do any of the normal things again; there was still something yet to do: the challenge of a lifetime. They were intent upon building a machine the likes of which had been deemed impossible to build, what historians now concede as the most complex machine ever been built by humans.

Scholarly research that reads like a novel.

History of technology buffs, like good detectives, love the hunt and "Bright Boys" has plenty afoot for everyone.

And what better story to unravel than the genesis, the how and why behind our our digital age and how, incredibly, it came to be. It's a story that's gone untold for too long. "Bright Boys" is a first.

Of my online readers, and astonishingly so to me, those from China outnumber nearly everyone else. In China, readers find American technical ingenuity great stuff; they can't Order "Bright Boys" today!seem to get enough of it. They read and listen and then pass it along to friends and colleagues. They ponder the scientific techniques at play in the book; they dream about the act of discovery, and about pulling off something ingeniousBright Boys free download themselves. The Chinese are a wonderfully appreciative audience truly dedicated to the website. It shows me that "Bright Boys" displays a distinct knack for percolating a bit of wonderment through readers' imaginations around the world. For this writer, that's rich appreciation and applause for five years of hard work bringing the story to life. Amazingly, only online could such an audience have been reached half a world away. And for that superb gift, I have the original bright boys to thank.

Newsletter Archive

News Notes
Insights into the History of Information Technology

America's first Silicon Valley: Philadelphia, 1950.
MORE

The Moore School lectures, 1946: the rise of the electronic brotherhood.
MORE

The remarkable Jay Forrester: RAM's first pioneer.
MORE

The United States Air Force: vanguard to the Internet.
MORE

2010 Information Technology's 60th anniversary.
MORE

Lessons for today's students from yesteryear's pioneers.
MORE

When computers learned to control other machines.
MORE

Two decades that changed everything!

"Bright Boys" by Tom Green

Bright Boys: 
The Making of Information Technology

by Tom Green

with a special Foreword by Jay W. Forrester

Click here for: annotated table of contents.

360 pages; footnotes, bibliography and index; archival photo collection.

Available: April 2010 (hardcover)

Order online now from AK Peters, Ltd. publisher, $39.00

ISBN: 978-1-56881-4766

The first high-tech wise guys. By 1950 they'd built the world's first real-time computer. Three years later they one-upped themselves when they switched on the world's first digital network.

In 1953 their work was met with incredulity and completely overlooked. By 1968 their work was gospel. Today, it's the way of the world: Information Technology.

All from a bunch of cocky 'digerati' who felt they could do anything they set their hands to, and usually did.

Decades later, one of the bright boys in old age would recall those halcyon days, saying, "Try as I may thereafter, I never ever again found its equal for intellectual exhileration and shear derring-do."

What began on theThe Barta Building, 211 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA bare floor of an old laundry building eventually grew to rival in size the Manhattan Project. The unexpected consequence of that journey was huge: Information Technology. And even more unexpected: trying to convince someone, anyone, that information was the key to most everything else.

For sixty years the bright boys have been totally anonymous while their achievements have become a way of life for all of us."Bright Boys" brings them home.

And then the behemoth came to life >> More
Bernard Widrow on RAM 1951 Video: Dr. Bernard Widrow, Stanford University, on developing the first computer RAM (Whirlwind, 1951)
Wikipedia: Genesis of Information Technology Wiki: Information Technology: At the dawn of the computer age.

Copyright © 2003-2010 Tom Green
All rights reserved