I highly recommend "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" - a talk given at the Computer History Museum. It starts with talk about radar and electronic warfare in WWII. "Every WWII movie you have ever seen that included airplanes on bombing missions is wrong". That soon becomes the genesis of universities in the war effort (research), east vs west coast, and Stanford with Fred Terman who is widely credited as being the father of Silicon Valley (along with William Shockley). He encouraged students to set up companies, sometimes investing in them too.
Probably the best book about the development of a tech project ever written. (Disclaimer: I worked at DG for a long time, albeit starting a bit after the events of the book, and knew many of the folks depicted.) Showstopper, about Windows NT, is another good read in this vein.
Yes, I read that book some years ago and thought it was a great read too - in the sense of entertaining, like a novel, even though it is mainly about the computer industry and the race to create that computer, a next generation Data General minicomputer. It's also to a good extent about skunkworks style product development. I love that quote about pinball in the book; won't spoil it for readers by saying what it is, but it is likely to appeal to many people on HN.
Along with Jacob’s laughter. “I thought it was hilarious. I mean, we both ate like pigs at the time, and I wasn’t surprised that Ben had to let one go, but man...what a doozy.” Ben and Jacob left the breakout room early; they feared a hazmat team was required to make the room usable again. But they couldn’t stop listening to the video as they walked back to Jacob’s apartment. Jacob remembered his epiphany; he didn’t think much of it then. “I didn’t like having to pull out my Flip cam to listen to it over and over again, when I had my iPhone right there. It deserved to be more convenient.” As soon as they returned to Jacob’s apartment, he built a (aptly described) “quick and dirty” iPhone app that could serve his purposes. All the app displayed was a big red button and the word “FART!” underneath it. Satisfied that it functioned as expected, Ben spent some time prettying up the button, and installed it on his own phone. The novelty refused to disappear as they pressed the button over and over again; the staying power of Ben’s indigestion was unprecedented.
I like the doorstopper Fire In The Valley a lot and have read it several times. It hits basically every part of SV history, following personal narratives of major players in each time period. This style makes it very interesting to read.
Disclaimer: I have no idea where it stands with regards to factual accuracy.
I watched this talk a long time ago, but I just noticed the name is Steve Blank, the "customer development" guy, and I have one of his books. That's pretty cool.
So far I've just dipped into it at the bookshops. Maybe a little bit inspirational and personality-centric, but overall Malone seems to be fairly well-informed (I am not a topic expert) and not concerned to sugar-coat the bad. For a book billed as a joint biography, it's disappointing that the author doesn't seem to have had any direct access to the subjects. But if you're interested in a popular history of Intel or the first decades of the semiconductor industry then I think this should do nicely. (However see this lukewarm review on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZKDIXCGFBZ02/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe... .)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo Hour long video
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Terman