Serious Machines

"Few books have captured the complexity and excitement of the last forty-some-odd years of advances in IT technology as effectively as Serious Machines." -Bob Stearns, Cofounder and Managing Director, Sternhill Associates, Past Chief Technology Officer, Compaq Computer

You're invited on a journey into the past, the present, and the future.

Computers fill our world, but for most of us, we own, use, and interact with just one type: computers designed for consumers. We use these at home to balance our checkbooks. We play online games with our friends. We catch up on our work email late at night. These home computers expand our world, but they're only one segment of the market.

This book is about the "other" computers. The serious machines. The machines that run computer-aided design to build our modern world. The machines that simulate how the fastest fighter jets will fly. The ones that help us predict the weather and run our air traffic control systems.

Most consumers don't understand the true power of computation. Yet with Generative AI and the power of large language models behind applications like ChatGPT, individual users are beginning to get a taste for what serious computers can do. They are getting a sneak peek at the hallowed halls of the mainframe room...the data center...the lab filled with workstations.

The pages of this book take a look at where computing began. They examine where it is now. And they note where it's going in the future. The world is expanding, and the power of computing is right there behind it, driving it all.

The book covers key milestones in workstation history, including:

1. The transition from mainframes to workstations for individual users
2. Pioneering companies like Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and DEC
3. The rise of Unix and specialized software for workstations
4. How workstations enabled breakthroughs in areas like 3D animation and scientific modeling

Serious Machines, filled with dozens of beautiful, full-color images and photographs from the author's personal vintage computer collection, is an essential read for technology enthusiasts, computer science students, and anyone interested in the hidden history behind the tools that built our modern digital world.

Best-selling author of The Sentient Machine and serial entrepreneur, Amir Husain takes readers on a fascinating journey through the development of powerful computational tools that revolutionized fields like engineering, science, and entertainment.