Skip to main content

The Electronics Revolution - J. B. Williams ***

If I'm honest, The Electronics Revolution was a lot better than I thought it would be. it has 27 topic-based chapters plus intro and conclusion, covering the development of electronic technology - some of it where electronics was not always involved - in everything from radio and TV to recorded music and computing. There is a real danger with this kind of format that you end up with chapter after chapter with very little substance, simply recounting examples of a particular application. Just occasionally, there is a touch of this - for example in dealing with the Millennium bug. However, mostly what we get is much better.

 What is impressive about the way that J. B. Williams (we are told nothing concerning the author, not even a first name) covers these topics is the detail of the early history that he or she digs out. So, for example, I thought I knew a fair amount about the origins of thermionic valves/vacuum tubes, but I hadn't seen before the story of Edison accidentally inventing the diode but not realising what he had done.

 This kind of 'ooh, that's interesting' bit happens regularly, particularly in the early parts of the history of each technology. Whether it's Berliner developing the gramophone or the various contributors to the development of integrated circuits, Williams fills in snippets of detail that you don't often see. The book was also particularly interesting with a transatlantic viewpoint, as he/she frequently produces plots of the take-up of various technologies comparing the UK and the US - while in some cases the US has the obvious lead, in others it lagged significantly behind, often due to entrenched business interests.

 The book is copyrighted 2017, but I do wonder if the text was written a few years earlier, as some later developments are missing. The section on video recording, for example, ends with DVDs and Blu-ray without mentioning PVRs... or for that matter, the way streaming has made recording far less necessary (this is also the case in the recorded music section).

 The author's personality comes through occasionally in chapters that touch on societal impacts. What we get is a slightly old-fashioned and sceptical view. Perhaps the oddest of these chapters is one on 'Pop music: youth culture in the 1950s and 1960s' which feels as if it's written by someone who was already past their youth by that time. But the strongest feeling comes through at the end of the banking chapter (one of the examples where the US has lagged way behind). On internet banking we are told 'Some younger people took to this with enthusiasm but the growth of internet banking was slow.' Hardly the picture now. Almost all electronic contributions to banking are described as if they purely benefit the banks and aren't useful to the customers, being a sort of conspiracy to distance the consumer from actual money so they would borrow more. Once again, this section feels like it was written a while ago - there's no mention of contactless payments or pay-by-phone.

 All in all, I felt I got a lot from this book, despite the author's foibles. I don't think it quite makes it as a general interest book, hence the 3 star rating, but if, like me, you have an interest in the early history of electronic technology, it's well worth getting hold of a copy.

Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

 
Review by Brian Clegg

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more