Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer

Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780881341218.

In the early 1970s the personal computer was just a wild dream shared by a small group of computer enthusiasts in an area south of San Francisco now called Silicon Valley. Working after-hours in basements and warehouses, computer pioneers Jobs and Wozniak of Apple Computer, Gates of Microsoft, Kildall of Digital Research, and many others ignited a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. This is the story of those individuals and the industry they founded. It reveals the visions they shared, the sacrifices they made, and the rewards they reaped. A fascinating account of an idea that caught fire. “Swaine and Freiberger capture the communal spirit of the early computer clubs, the brilliance and blundering of some of the first start-up companies, the assortment of naivete, noble purpose and greed that characterized various pioneers, and the inevitable transformation of all this into a major industry. Must reading." --Philip Lemmons, editor-in-chief, BYTE Magazine