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:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically?  Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...
Post a Comment
Read more