popular electronics

Apple: The First 50 Years

by David Pogue  · 10 Mar 2026  · 686pp  · 216,944 words

members were buzzing about the MITS Altair 8800, a $400 build-it-yourself microcomputer kit. The Altair had appeared on the January 1975 cover of Popular Electronics—and there, tonight, they got a demo of the real thing. Considering all the buzz it got in 1975, the Altair wasn’t much of

How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic

by Michael Geier  · 6 Jan 2011  · 336pp  · 163,867 words

devices like intercoms and fanciful ones like the Electroquadrostatic Litholator (don’t ask), fixing every broken gadget I could get my hands on, and devouring Popular Electronics, Electronics Illustrated and Radio-Electronics—great magazines crammed with construction articles and repair advice columns. Only one issue a month? What were they waiting for

The Everything Blueprint: The Microchip Design That Changed the World

by James Ashton  · 11 May 2023  · 401pp  · 113,586 words

educated. So the story goes, on a shopping trip to his local Safeway grocery store between language classes, he was flicking through a copy of Popular Electronics magazine when he happened upon a close-up picture of Intel’s newly announced 8080 chip, the antecedent of the x86 architecture that would come

Dark Pools: The Rise of the Machine Traders and the Rigging of the U.S. Stock Market

by Scott Patterson  · 11 Jun 2012  · 356pp  · 105,533 words

, of course, it was on the floor. The floor was trash. Chunks of ancient candy bars, apple cores, blackened orange peel, coffee grounds. Stacks of Popular Electronics and Investors Business Daily. An oscilloscope. Milk cartons. Mostly empty plastic Coke bottles. Computer keyboards, several broken. An eighteen-inch lizard named Greg sat in

Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology

by Howard Rheingold  · 14 May 2000  · 352pp  · 120,202 words

working computer. Roberts decided to provide the other components and a method for interconnecting them and sell the kits to hobbyists. In January of 1975, Popular Electronics magazine did a cover story on "a computer you can build yourself for $420." It was called the Altair (after a planet in a Star

Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM

by Paul Carroll  · 19 Sep 1994

friend Paul Allen came to visit. Stopping at a newsstand in Harvard Yard on his way to see Gates, Allen bought the latest issue of Popular Electronics and found an early personal com puter called the Altair was on the cover. Allen, a painfully quiet sort whose bulk and beard make him

The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution

by T. R. Reid  · 18 Dec 2007  · 293pp  · 91,110 words

designed, not for big corporations or mighty bureaucracies, but rather for ordinary people. The personal computer got its start in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, a journal widely read among ham radio buffs and electronics hobbyists. The cover of that issue trumpeted a “Project Breakthrough! World’s First Minicomputer

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a homemade “microcomputer” in which the Intel 8080 microprocessor replaced hundreds of individual logic chips found in the standard office computer of the day. The Popular Electronics kit was strictly bare-bones, but it gave anybody who was handy with a soldering iron the chance to have a computer—for a total

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write a program to do just that, I would proudly share my handiwork with you—for free. But among the first to start programming the Popular Electronics 8080-based computer was a Harvard undergraduate who had a different idea. In the late 1970s he wrote the first genuinely useful program for 8080

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,306. actually was a computer on a chip: U.S. Patent No. 4,074,351. The introductory price was $200: Libes, p. 68. “Project Breakthrough! . . .”: Popular Electronics, January 1975. Homebrew Computer Club: Time, Jan. 3, 1983. “Clearly, a world with . . .”: Interview with Noyce. Chapter 9: DIM-I a summer day in 1976

Open Space: From Earth to Eternity--the Global Race to Explore and Conquer the Cosmos

by David Ariosto  · 24 Mar 2026  · 433pp  · 116,344 words

in 1971. Three years after that, it was the Altair 8800, which lacked a keyboard but nonetheless graced the cover of a 1975 edition of Popular Electronics, where it was billed as the “World’s First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models.” It sold for $395. Thousands lined up to get one

The Matter of the Heart: A History of the Heart in Eleven Operations

by Thomas Morris  · 31 May 2017

broken medical equipment Bakken often found himself moonlighting as a TV repair man. Rooting around in the messy workshop, he unearthed an old issue of Popular Electronics magazine. He remembered an article giving instructions for constructing an electronic metronome, a simple circuit using only a few basic components which when attached to

AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War

by Tom McNichol  · 31 Aug 2006

batteries. In the AC/DC war, the victor would become the vanquished, and Edison would be proven right after all. In a 1910 article for Popular Electronics, Edison wrote, “For years past I have been trying to perfect a storage battery, and have now rendered it entirely suitable to automobile and other

Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet

by Joseph Menn  · 26 Jan 2010  · 362pp  · 86,195 words

Outliers

by Malcolm Gladwell  · 29 May 2017  · 230pp  · 71,320 words

Dealers of Lightning

by Michael A. Hiltzik  · 27 Apr 2000  · 559pp  · 157,112 words

Gambling Man

by Lionel Barber  · 3 Oct 2024  · 424pp  · 123,730 words

The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

by Mariana Mazzucato  · 1 Jan 2011  · 382pp  · 92,138 words

You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves

by Hiawatha Bray  · 31 Mar 2014  · 316pp  · 90,165 words

The Rise of the Network Society

by Manuel Castells  · 31 Aug 1996  · 843pp  · 223,858 words

Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

by Bhu Srinivasan  · 25 Sep 2017  · 801pp  · 209,348 words

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow  · 6 Oct 2025  · 313pp  · 94,415 words

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal

by M. Mitchell Waldrop  · 14 Apr 2001

Microchip: An Idea, Its Genesis, and the Revolution It Created

by Jeffrey Zygmont  · 15 Mar 2003

The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson  · 6 Oct 2014  · 720pp  · 197,129 words

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell

by Phil Lapsley  · 5 Feb 2013  · 744pp  · 142,748 words

What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

by John Markoff  · 1 Jan 2005  · 394pp  · 108,215 words

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader

by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli  · 24 Mar 2015  · 464pp  · 155,696 words

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)

by Adam Fisher  · 9 Jul 2018  · 611pp  · 188,732 words

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

by Charles Petzold  · 28 Sep 1999  · 566pp  · 122,184 words

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator

by Keith Houston  · 22 Aug 2023  · 405pp  · 105,395 words

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

by Anthony M. Townsend  · 29 Sep 2013  · 464pp  · 127,283 words

Makers at Work: Folks Reinventing the World One Object or Idea at a Time

by Steven Osborn  · 17 Sep 2013  · 310pp  · 34,482 words

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

by Philip Coggan  · 6 Feb 2020  · 524pp  · 155,947 words

The Road Ahead

by Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson  · 15 Nov 1995  · 317pp  · 101,074 words

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley

by Atsuo Inoue  · 18 Nov 2021  · 295pp  · 89,441 words

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara  · 8 Jul 2019

Track Changes

by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum  · 1 May 2016  · 519pp  · 142,646 words

The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication From Ancient Times to the Internet

by David Kahn  · 1 Feb 1963  · 1,799pp  · 532,462 words

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition

by Steven Levy  · 18 May 2010  · 598pp  · 183,531 words

Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer

by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger  · 19 Oct 2014  · 459pp  · 140,010 words

The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution

by Henry Schlesinger  · 16 Mar 2010  · 336pp  · 92,056 words

Computer: A History of the Information Machine

by Martin Campbell-Kelly and Nathan Ensmenger  · 29 Jul 2013  · 528pp  · 146,459 words

From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry

by Martin Campbell-Kelly  · 15 Jan 2003

Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

by G. Pascal Zachary  · 1 Apr 2014  · 384pp  · 109,125 words

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

by Shane Snow  · 8 Sep 2014  · 278pp  · 70,416 words

Commodore: A Company on the Edge

by Brian Bagnall  · 13 Sep 2005  · 781pp  · 226,928 words

Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets - Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor

by John Kay  · 24 May 2004  · 436pp  · 76 words

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

by Malcolm Harris  · 14 Feb 2023  · 864pp  · 272,918 words

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber  · 29 Oct 2024  · 292pp  · 106,826 words

Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age

by W. Bernard Carlson  · 11 May 2013  · 733pp  · 184,118 words

Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

by E. Gabriella Coleman  · 25 Nov 2012  · 398pp  · 107,788 words

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

by Susan Cain  · 24 Jan 2012  · 377pp  · 115,122 words

All the Money in the World

by Peter W. Bernstein  · 17 Dec 2008  · 538pp  · 147,612 words

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport  · 5 Jan 2016

Korea--Culture Smart!

by Culture Smart!  · 15 Jun 201  · 124pp  · 37,476 words

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

by Cal Newport  · 17 Sep 2012  · 197pp  · 60,477 words

Python for Algorithmic Trading: From Idea to Cloud Deployment

by Yves Hilpisch  · 8 Dec 2020  · 1,082pp  · 87,792 words

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

by Anupreeta Das  · 12 Aug 2024  · 315pp  · 115,894 words

Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology

by Adrienne Mayor  · 27 Nov 2018

Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future

by Mervyn King and John Kay  · 5 Mar 2020  · 807pp  · 154,435 words

Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century

by James R. Flynn  · 5 Sep 2012