About Us, About Me, About "Bright Boys"

Bright Boys:
The Making of Information Technology
by Tom Green

with a special Foreword by Jay W. Forrester

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

Published: April 2010 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-56881-4766

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Sadly, my research into computer pioneers from 1938-1958 turned up very few women.

Of course, there was always Grace Hopper in the picture as well as mentions back to Ada Lovelace. I was hoping to encounter a prev-iously unknown breakthrough individual or two, but no, none were in evidence.

I encountered female mathema-ticians, programmers, and calcula-tors in the emerging electronic digital computer movement, but that was it.

Cyntrica Eaton, reviewing Bright Boys for The American Associa-tion for the Advancement of Science duly remarks on the ab-sence, saying: "Although I enjoyed reading Bright Boys, the absence of women from the narrative was quite striking, especially to me as a female computer scientist. Indeed, in the era featured in the book, neither women nor minorities were welcomed or strongly encouraged to participate in “STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields."

She concludes: "I think that Bright Boys provides an insightful look into the past and silently encour-ages readers like me to make sure that future advances have diverse contributors."

About me: Tom Green

I fell in love with the bright boys almost immediately.
Fascination, respect, and admiration followed soon thereafter.

BOSTON: I read everything that I could find about them and their times. During my research I was astounded by the myriad crosscurrents and connections seemingly from every quarter—science, engineering, business, government, education, and history—that everywhere at every turn encountered the bright boys and somehow touched upon their work.

Most of the story material I found hidden away in rather dry engineering and Air Force journals or in weighty academic tomes. Then too, some of it I discovered in books of social commentary and current history that, I thought, didn't quite hit the right angle on the bright boys. I felt that a retelling was in order.

So much of the bright boys' story has gone untold and so much of their true impact on the future unrecognized that I felt compelled to write about them. I wrote at first for myself, to make sense of it all, to tie all the loose ends together into a coherent picture of the bright boys and their world. And when my brief, initial paper on them suddenly blossomed into a 20,000-word monograph, I knew that I had something very special and quite powerful in my hands. I sent copies of the monograph to both Jay and Bob. Bob and I then discussed the monograph while Jay added to my collection of Whirlwind research.

The story had "snap" to it, and the bright boys' work had powerful appeal. I knew that others would feel the same way about this remarkably American saga of a band of bright guys dragging a big chunk of the future into being.

Up goes the bright boys website

In 2003, I raised the first of a series of websites (this present one is the fourth). The website was a central point for outreach to others with material to add to the story, a medium for email communication, and an announcement to literary agents and publishers that an interesting manuscript was taking shape. The website worked well: I got lots of interest from readers and educators; and my email inbox was stuffed to the rafters with rejections from agents and publishers. Hard as rejections are to bear, I had to put them aside and stick to telling my story.

Working in the boundary zone

I am a writer who works in print and video to tell stories about science, technology and engineering. I inhabit a kind of strange but wonderful boundary zone that separates twin worlds.

One world is that of complex science and technology from highly technical experts, some of who have difficulty in plainly articulating what it is that they do all day in their labs. On the other side of the boundary is that of the educated, general reader, who truly enjoys knowing about all the whiz-bang technology that's going on but has difficulty understanding it all. That's where I come in: I love to facilitate the difficulties between both worlds.

Most times I'm successful. I feel that I bring to that zone of interaction some fair skills at gathering information, storytelling, and experience in a variety of media. I use whatever medium to tell my story that seems most appropriate to the telling.

It's all about storytelling

I am an award-winning short story writer and playwright, and have been Emmy-nominated for writing a few laughs into sitcoms at Boston's local ABC-TV affiliate. My stage plays were produced at Boston's Next Move Theatre and then reproduced as radioplays for National Public Radio. I wrote and produced the forum-based TV pilot "Lifelines" at Boston's WCVB-TV, Channel 5 .

My mystery-detective novel "The Flowered Box" recounts the gumshoe adventures of two Boston-based private investigators; and my magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in various publications.

I have worked for others as writer and producer; and then as vice president of video development. And I have worked for myself: for nearly 10 years, I owned and operated a video production company, producing both corporate video, broadcast and cablecast TV.

Since 1995, when my eyes bugged out at the coming of the Internet and World Wide Web, I have been busily evolving my storytelling skills and video-making experience for this new and astounding medium. The convergence of video, still photography, art, print, music and audio production with the Internet completely changed me and my world. It's the perfect stage for what I love to do. I'm thrilled with launching "Bright Boys" into this marvelously exciting cyber world.

Welcome to "Bright Boys"

ABOVE: Jay Forrester on front steps at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey said the “best portion of a good man’s life,” were his "little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and love.” Jay Forrester’s life has been filled with such “acts”. For me, especially. He very kindly penned the foreword to Bright Boys, but long before that extend-ed to me, with considerable effort and wisdom, his solid memory of events and people; a stash of rare documents that enriched the story, and his unstinting attention that my manuscript be accurate. All of which will be long remembered by this writer.

His partner in leading Whirlwind's bright boys, Bob Everett, also gave generously of himself with his fine recollections of those times and their significance in bringing forth the revolution that was Information Technology.

My gratitude and respect to both of these bright boy leaders for build-ing a superb machine and for offer-ing me a glimpse into the lives of the people who made it.

My First Brush with the Electronics' Revolution

On Father’s Day 1971 I stood in line with about a hundred others at the now-defunct Lechmere Sales in Dedham, MA; we were all waiting, with varying degrees of patience, for the near-impossible-to-get wonder machine of the time, the Bomar Brain—the first handheld calculator. All of four functions, with fuzzy, hard-to-read, red LED numbers, the Bomar Brain sold for $120.00. Yes, you heard me: $120.

A capability that today comes free in cereal boxes was very dear back then. Everyone in my family had chipped in for the Father’s Day surprise that would replace dad’s 55-lbs metal desktop calculator. The Bomar Brain was the upgrade of upgrades. In the Bomar TV ad, the actor smiled saying, “Now I’m not a dummy anymore,” holding up the chunky hunk of plastic. My dad was one less dummy more.

Everyone at Lechmere’s that day could sense that something big was happening in America. A revolution, maybe. Sure enough, the camera counter at Lechmere’s permanently started sharing space with the new “calculator counter” as Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, and many others kicked off the calculator wars.

A year later, for as little as $40 bucks, I could add, subtract, multiply or divide in the palm of my hand. A year after that, a sign dangled over the calculator coun-ter, reading: Electronics Depart-ment. Wow! That was fast.

And when the HP-35 scientific calculator came out in 1972, well, the workers at the Hemmi, Pickett, and Keuffel & Esser slide rule factories must have packed their bags and just shuffled sadly off into history. Slide rules were goners for good.

I soon learned that it was just the beginning.